Dyeing for Color Part 1: Purple and Gold

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It’s spring and nature is spreading color all over the place (mostly green pollen all over my car).  Since Spring Break is here, and a little bit of extra time with it, I thought I’d do my part to help.  Last week I prepped ahead and ordered 10 Jacquard Acid Dyes from Sheepish Creations at Etsy.  (Yellow Sun, Pink, Turquoise, Russet, Aztec Gold, Kelly Green, Purple, Burgundy, Silver Grey, and Periwinkle)  Add those to the Emerald Green and Sapphire Blue that I already had, and that’s 12 colors to experiment with.

So I started with Purple, on my daughters recommendation (I just finished a dye job that I call Pankedy Pinkity, see below, for a friend of mine’s grand-baby, so my daughter was content to let me off the pink hook.)Pankedy Pinkity

At first I was at a loss for how to deal with such small quantities of dye powder.  I tried measuring out one gram, the smallest unit my scale will measure.  Then I eyeballed dividing it by 4.  So I ended up adding 0.25 grams of dye powder to 4 cups of water and 1/4 cup of white vinegar.  Previous research has shown that it doesn’t much matter how much liquid is in the bath.  The dye will either be absorbed or it won’t.  I put a 6 yard strand of white yarn in the bath and began heating it on the stove top (medium heat).  After five minutes, I removed the first yard.  Every 5 minutes after that I removed another yard.

Purple Dye Bath
The dye bath as the fiber was put it was opaque

When the fiber had all been pulled, the dye bath was still very dark and the first pull was a very deep purple.  I decided to dilute the dye bath and try another set.

The first set of purple dye was almost black at 30 minutes and even the 5 minute pull was fairly dark.

The dye bath was diluted by half and I repeated the process.

Results of the diluted dye bath.

Here the first pull was a bit lighter.  It’s hard to see in these photos, but the last pulls are lighter as well, and a good deal redder in tone.

Having learned a bit about what effect an overabundance of dye has on the color product, I found the smallest spoon I could and used it to measure out the dye for the next batch, romantically named Aztec Gold.

The full dye bath was almost, but not quite opaque.

The results for this one were stunning, thought the dye bath was not quite depleted at the end.  I quick dipped a length of yarn to see what the lightest color it could produce would be.

The picture doesn’t begin to do it justice.  I have a feeling that we will be seeing a lot of Aztec Gold coming out of my dye pots.