On a recent thrift shop trip, I found a fabulous linen dress in a not-so-lovely shade of chartreuse. Think neon yellow. The low price outweighed the hideous color and the style is perfect for our over 95 degree summers. No worries, I thought, I’ll just ask our resident Dye-it-Yourself Diva, Lynn Koolish if she has anything planned for the dye pot and see if my dress could join in the fun for an over-dye.
Lynn was pleased to have me join in her next dyeing project. She had been planning to dye a shirt but her environmentally responsible, water conservationist conscience (not to mention the high prices for water that are inflicted if we go over the mandatory minimums around here) would not let her dye just one lone garment. But two…? You bet!
Lynn hadn’t yet picked out a color and asked for my thoughts. I would have been happy with black, but she, being a little, OK A LOT, more adventurous than I, pulled me out of my comfort zone. After careful consideration of our garments’ original colors as they were, we settled on a lovely shade of what the Dharma Trading catalog called aqua marine.
She warned me the dress might shrink, the thread might not accept the dye, depending on how much cotton was in it, and the final dress color would be somewhat different from the color in the aqua marine swatch, due to the original color of the dress (being chartreuse). No problem…I was in the hands of the C&T resident Dye Pot Diva!
Lynn prepared the dye for the washing machine–for full dyeing instruction see Lynn’s book Fast, Fun and Easy® Fabric Dyeing– and decided to throw my dress in first, as extra time would be needed in order to alter it’s eye-popping neon color. She waited 30 minutes and then threw in her shirt. For the record, Lynn’s linen shirt started out white. From what she could tell, the thread didn’t appear to be cotton, so she didn’t think it would accept the dye very well and that it would probably stay white.
After about 2 hours in the dye, she washed both the dress and the shirt several times in hot water to wash out all the excess dye. Now remember we selected aqua marine as our color goal. My dress turned out a lovely shade of grass green and Lynn’s shirt is now a beautiful shade of robin’s egg blue!
Lynn can talk forever about how many dye colors are actually made up of several colors, and how the different colors in the mixed dyes react at different times, which could explain why my dress turned out more green and her shirt more blue. All that matters to is that I love my new dress color, and she loves her new blue shirt!
So while those colors are a little different from the aqua marine color swatch (above), we are both pleased as punch with our new clothes!
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6 Comments
How curious that they turned out so different…but both lovely!
Lynn is an inspiring teacher. So happy to know her.
Lynn is an inspiring teacher. So happy to kno
What a fun project! Sometimes you don’t know what you’ll end up with, but it’s definitely better than what you started with! I LOVE playing around with dyes. I’ve dyed a lot of yarn in the past, but I’m just getting started with dyeing quilt fabric.
How wonderful and lovely each turned out! Thank you for sharing!!!
A bit like printmaking — you plan and hope, but the result is always a surprise and part of the fun of doing it!