Dye Day #4

I don't think I ever showed you a picture of how I wrap my skeins for ikat dyeing. I usually make the skeins 60" around. I buy some nice sturdy garbage bags, cut them crosswise in about 2" wide strips and wrap clockwise. It really doesn't matter which way you wrap.

Someone gave me a roll of Japanese Ikat wrap. I had never used it before and wanted to give it a try. It is a lot stiffer than the garbage bags and has a tendency to split vertically. It makes wrapping more difficult, but attaching the end of wrap is easier. The clear shiny is the official ikat tape. All of the ikat tape skeins are 50" around, so I could tell the difference between the two after I unwrapped them.

In this dye pot, we have 8/2 unmercerized cotton and a little bamboo and tencel. In a wild moment of equal practicality and impracticality, I bought 25# of unmercerized undyed cotton. Time will tell if I was wise or foolish. I was curious how it would take the dye having never dyed unmercerized cotton before. Then I got this crazy idea: Hey, what if I dyed a color other than black? Wildly I purchased cobalt!

Here you see me in my official dyeing shirt as I am removing all of the dyed skeins from the dye pot. I have to say this was the least messy and least anxiety producing dye day yet. I never wanted this to happen. I wanted to remain a virtual dyer forever. Who knows, perhaps my days as a virtual quilter and virtual gardener are numbered?

And here they are all unwrapped. The lower skeins are the tencel and bamboo. You can tell already the tencel and bamboo take the dyes much better, richer, deeper. I am sure they will all lighten up as they dry. It's been rather cool and damp, so it may take a couple of days before they dry. I'm not sure when I will get a test warp on the loom since I am in early countdown for my next teaching trip, and both looms have new warps on them already.