The First Dyeing of March

Earlier this week I decided to tackle some previously dyed silk. I had originally dyed it with a project in mind, three pieces were even sewn together, but as I looked at the silk over the last few weeks it just looked weak to me. I didn’t want to abandon the project, or continue working with some really average looking fabric, so I decided to tackle the silk and see what happened.

The above piece is a bit over 3 feet long, it is actually 3 strips, originally dyed separately, then sewn together. The main problem with this piece was that the three strips looked too separate and just needed a little bit of unification. With this piece I rubbed frozen cranberries into a few spots then steamed the fabric and it created an interesting bleed over the original dyeing. I also did a random spattering of turmeric, then steamed the silk again, just to bring in a hint of yellow.

This piece of silk, when it was first dyed, had to be the ugliest and most depressing blue/purple/grey color I have ever seen. When I redyed it I chose to bundle it with tea, onion skins, whole frozen cranberries and turmeric….then did a little cranberry finger painting (or smushing) for good measure.

This piece of silk, originally dyed in strawberry, was rebundled with onion skins and then had cranberries smushed (technical term! LOL!) into the surface for a random patterning.

I am quite amused to look at the items used for coloring the fabric in this post. Almost all of the items used for dyeing have at one time or other completely wrecked one of my children’s pieces of clothing with a stain. I guess that is one way to know color will last, if stain remover and a washing machine can’t get rid of the color, the color is probably there to stay.