Hand-Dyeing Hubby

Hi Mika,You are a lucky gal to have a dh like yours!I would go for the bleached and put it through a really hot wash before you try! It will get you the hang of it! Good luck and let us know how you get on!

First off, you can hand dye almost ANY fabric. The differences you'll notice are in how nice the fabric is to sew with, how intense of a color you can dye, and how clear (vs. how muddy) the final color is. Buy a yard or two of a couple different muslins, dye them up, and see what you like. White-on-whites are a lot of fun, too.

Dharma will send you little (and I do mean little) swatches of their fabrics for 25 cents each. A couple of times they've been really nice and sent them to me at no charge. When I'm testing different fabrics for dyeing, I take a little swatch of each, number them with a sharpie, and dump them all in the same dye bath and swish them around good. I usually use a very strong turquoise, because it will tell me a lot about how intense and how clear the color turns out.

My local JoAnns used to carry Kona PFD, which was wonderful for dyeing. I didn't like their plain muslins so much because I am usually going after clear colors. Dharma also carries the Kona PFD at a reasonable price. But my all time favorite is Test Fabric's 400M cotton.

It's really reasonably priced, dyes up great, and is a joy to sew with. IIRC, Test Fabrics was also very nice about sending me swatches to test. HTH!

I'm pretty sure I've seen PFD fabric at JoAnn's.

Mika, I know *nothing* about dyeing fabrics, but I'm wishing you lots of luck and lots of fun doing this along with your DH. :)

I've done plenty of dyeing with muslin - both bleached and unbleached.

L>Now I have a couple of questions for all you handdye experts. I know the

Linda PATCHogue, NY

Okay, Taria -- I'm in! ;)

You'll probably prefer the colors you get with bleached muslin, and really prefer mercerized cotton -- much deeper than the colors on just plain cottons. PDF is nice because you don't have to do do the scouring, etc.

Enjoy. Have fun. Make mistakes.

Good book for initial tries: Ann Johnston: Color by Accident. Your library may already have it. And you can contain all the mess in a sink quite nicely.

And when you wind up with ugly fabrics (there will be some), either cut them up into small patches or overdye them with something else. What's ugly with one dyeing often becomes gorgeous with 2-3 trips through the dye bath.

Jim Kankula showed a method of marbling fabric with fiber reactive dyes (like Procion MX) on a bed of shaving cream on one of his appearances on Simply Quilts: (paste together URL or click on:

The photos in the URL don't do justice to what can be done:

Kay

You can frequently get PFD fabric in the muslins at JoAnn's. Look for the Roc-lon brand PFD muslin (bleached and unbleached), it is considered a muslin by them. And I have used regular muslin too, just washed and rinsed well.

Pati, > After looking at the Hancock hit lit that Sandy posted I was really

I'm a big believer in start out as you mean to go on. If your first attempt comes out wonderful, but you did it on junk cloth, you will be kicking yourself. If your first attempt comes out awful, and you did it on good cloth, you will have a bit to use in piecing a backing, useing for contrast or at the very least you will have a top quality dustcloth. Start out doing little batches and use FQs, it is all the same process only smaller.

I have never used pfd fabric, ever. Unbleached gives darker colors, bleached gives brighter. Muslin works just fine, though I have never been impressed with JoAnns muslin.

I have found that colors like dark purple or other pre-mixed colors often will turn out oddly without water softener or a little calsolene, sometimes both. No doubt YMMV with the natural condition of your water. You can go miles with just the primary colors.

NightMist

I haven't done dyeing in a long time because I don't have a utility sink, but the mistakes have turned out to be my favorite fabrics. Once I just splashed the left over dye on a torn up white sheet and let it sit. The colors and gradations were wonderful.

L>Enjoy. Have fun. Make mistakes.

Linda PATCHogue, NY

On Fri, 30 Mar 2007 10:28:27 -0500, Mika wrote (in article ):

I've used plain muslin from JoAnn's and haven't had a problem. You might want to check out some of the dyeing classes at Quilt University. I thought they were really fun.

Maureen

Now that it's warming up, I really should get my dyeing stuff back out.

... judging from the "Subject" line only ..... and, uh, what color did you dye him, Mika? Ducking and running! ME-Judy

The same thought came to me too! It is a funny sight to imagine. I was thinking blue. or purple.

Thanks Estelle. I will probably just get a few yards of muslin from JAF to experiment with before I splurge on the better fabric.

Hugs, Mika

heheh I didn't even think about how that would sound when I wrote it. I'm really not planning to hand-dye him lol. It was really sweet of him to offer to help though. He's such a sweety anyway. I don't know what I'd do without him.

Hugs, Mika

Thank you so much for all the info Kathy. It does help tremendously. I mostly want rich, vibrant colors. What do you mean by clear color and muddy color? I just want to make sure what I'm thinking is what you mean. I think I will start out with a few yards of muslin from JAF just to see how it's done before I invest in the more expensive fabric. I'm really kind of excited about trying it. Is Dharma the best place to buy the dyes and supplies? I have one of their catalogs but it's outdated. I did look at their website though.

Hugs, Mika