Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Fun with Dye


I've only dyed fabric a handful of times But I nearly doubled my fabric dying experience yesterday when I dyed a whole bunch of nylon chiffon for some pettiskirts. My biggest challenge was the peach because RIT does not make a peach dye nor does it recommend any mixture of colors to achieve peach so I was on my own. First, I bought an antique peach RIT dye pack which turned out quite orange (this is the fabric on the left). Too orange for what I wanted so I first did a search on the internet to see what colors would make peach. I found answers ranging from peach mixed with tan, Pink mixed with yellow, red mixed with orange, red mixed with yellow and so forth but since I wanted a really light peach I decided to go with pink mixed with yellow. I went to JoAnns where Dye's were on sale (lucky me) and got 4 different colors to experiment with. As well as a small piece of fabric that was the color I was going for.
I started with yellow and gradually added pink until I achieved my desired color. I'm VERY happy with how it turned out. You can see in my picture how the colors gradually turn from yellow to peach in my little swatches. My final peach is on the right with my "control" color along the top. What fun! My next adventure might be trying some acid dyes since they are supposedly better for nylon fabrics. I'm not too worried about the RIT since the problem it posses is fading, but since the pettiskirts don't get washed much it works and is easily accessible.
I also dyed some fabric yellow, pink and orange however they were not as difficult as the peach. It's nice to know that I can just dye my own fabrics when I'm in a bind and can't wait a week for a fabric order to come in.

1 comments:

Cynthia said...

So, you'll probably never even see this comment but this old post of yours made me smile. I just dyed up a lot of Coral/peach fabric today for a pettiskirt for my little girl. I used the Cushing's Perfection Dyes. They are acid dyes but they come out gorgeous for pettis. I think I've made nearly a dozen pettiskirts now for my girls and neices. Dyeing the fabric adds a new dimension of fun to the whole process.

And how funny we were going after the same color! LOL!