Great Women Building a Gracious World

Editors:                                                                                                                                                  Volume 1, Issue 1

Sandra Bennett                                                                                                                                     July/August 2006

LeslieShelor                                                                                                                                                                               

Image by Sandra Bennett

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Fiber Femmes Firsts!

First Time Dyeing Experiments

 

Remember that first time?  How excited, nervous, and fascinated you were with the experience?  Share your fiber first with other Fiber Femmes in pictures and let us know all about your very first time!

 

This issue's fiber firsts are the first time dyeing experiments of our readers.  Next time we'll be looking for pictures of YOUR first spinning wheel.  Send images in .jpeg or .gif format and a short description to Fiber Femmes before August 15 to be included in the September/October issue.

 

Susan Jane Caraccio sends pictures of merino handspun yarn.  She dyed the pink with Tropical Punch Kool-Aid and plied the two singles for an interesting yarn!

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Evelyn Lahman writes:

The photos I'm sending were taken in March of 2001, this is while I was still doing rug hooking, and the dyeing, was for a specific reason. I wanted to have a "sky" color that went from a medium blue to an almost white. This was done with commercial dye (don't remember the brand) The wool piece that is the fourth from the left is the one I used for this purpose. The
rest were also used in rug hooking. The photo that is taken on the kitchen table shows how I cut them in order to achieve my color scheme, each strip was taped down in the order that I

cut them, which is also the order in which they were used. I have retired from the rug hooking part of the fiber world and now concentrate on spinning and weaving.

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From Lisa Englant:

The raw wool was basically an unknown scrumble mixture of breeds, but I suspect by the look of it mostly BFL, Merino and some Jacob.  It was all shades of dark gray to almost charcoal black before I dyed it.  Since I am a soapmaker by trade, I have lots of FD&C (food color) dyes around, so I used a bright shade of one of my blues and white vinegar as the mordant to get this beautiful turquoise.  The overdye of the gray and blue is going to spin up into a fantastic yarn.

This is Ramboullet fleece that is also dyed with FC%C food colorants with citric acid for the mordant. This time I simply lay the fleece in my steamer tray and randomly squirted colors over top of it to the point of saturation. I then wrapped it all up tight in saran wrap and "cooked" it in the crockpot on low for several hours. After the cook, I turned off the crockpot and left it in overnight to cool. These are the carnival colors I got after rinsing the wool. Yarn is yet to be spun.

Here is another overdye project. As you can see, it has already made it's way through the process of being spun, plyed and skeined. This skein started life as a bit of Icelandic wool, dark gray in color. I spun the wool and plyed it before I dyed it this time. This color came for Black Cherry Kool Aid of all things! The combination of the dark gray and the Black Cherry gave me the fabulous maroon you see here.

This skein is certainly on that falls into the category of "designer". The wool is Rambouillet, and it was so soft and tender that it was extremely difficult to card without making neps. So neps I got and made the part of the yarn. I dyed the roving prior to spinning with FD&C food color dye and white vinegar for the mordant. I call this particular yarn "Fiesta" I don't think I'll ever make anything with this yarn because I really love it.

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Linda Wright participated in a "Dye Day" with two friends and learned to use acid dyes to hand paint her very first hand spun skeins

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Sandra Bennett's skeins with the first time using acid dyes; she was already familiar with natural dyes.

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From Merike Saarniit:

I just got back from teaching "Color Remedies & Color Recipes" at Camp Stitches (at Lake Junaluska NC). One of the topics of the workshop was about what one can do to "redeem" yarn that is in one's stash (or found in the sale bin) which is in colors not to one's liking.
One of our participants brought in a number of skeins of wool yarn that had been dyed so that half the skein was an apricot-y orange and the other half undyed white. Everyone got one of these skeins and painted away. The results were glorious! Each one different, of course.
The skein at the far left is the original. Three participants already had theirs wound into balls... Talk about Redemption!

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Lisa Wilson dyed these small skeins with drink mixes.  She usually works with natural dyes, so she found that this was a fun project for her.  She plans to use the yarn in a Fair Isle cap.

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Marlene Gruetter  sent a picture of her Genome Scarf made with hand dyed Wesleydale wool, trimmed with hand dyed mohair and merino top.

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Martha McGrath dyed roving from the fleece of her Coopworth sheep in her first dyeing experiment.  She used Procion Fiber Reactive dyes because that was what she had available, and used the roving to make Australian Locker Hooked rugs.

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Norma Sutton created this beautiful shawl from her first dyed yarn.  She writes, "This is the first shawl I knit from my hand dyed wool... The yarn was a combination of several types of wool and mohair. I dyed it in two (crock pot) batches with food coloring.. The first batch was dyed with green on one side and blue on the other, the second batch was blue on one side and red on the other."

 

Leslie Shelor spun and plied pure gray Angora wool from a German Cross Angora chinchilla rabbit on her book charkha, and then dyed the resulting yarn with grape Kool-aid as her first experience with dyeing.  She placed the skeins in glass jars in the back of her Lincoln to "sun" dye the yarn!