The Magic of Hand Dyeing Fabric

Last month, for only the third time since moving to New Zealand, I dyed Fabric. It was glorious. I had forgotten what in integral part of my process the creation of color is.

I am now overflowing with new ideas and energized to make make make!

The creation of color, the immersion into color, the saturated feast for the senses. It inspires me to mix them in fun new ways.

Color is infinitely versatile, mysterious and stubborn.

For fun I made a collage of the colors I created. A work of art itself.

Creating Deep Rich Colors

About two thirds of these fabrics are “over-dyes”. Which means I dyed them once years ago and last month I dyed them a second time. Layering on more color. It creates a deeper richer depth of color.

I think it’s about the only way to get the reds I want to work with. And it explains why I haven’t used much red recently. I ran out of the complex reds I prefer.

Well – that and I know live in a country that is mostly blues and greens. My color sense has definitely shifted.

Although I’ve got a design on the wall using red I’m quite excited about so it is reappearing.

How I Dye Fabric

Years ago I wrote a series of blog posts on how I manage to dye 60-80 yards of fabric in a single afternoon. Those posts (along with my other 1300 blog posts from 2005-2017 sadly fell off my blog one day and I am working to slowly restore them.

That series of posts is probably the most frequently asked for series of posts.

Today I added them back to my site so you can read about the process. I do things pretty much the same way as described in those posts. Although now I do more over-dyeing.

The posts in the series:

How to dye 60-100 yards of fabric in a few hours

How to Dye Fabric: Kaufman Pimatex PFD Fabric

How to Dye Fabric: The Dyes and the Process

How to Dye Fabric: Rinsing Out the Fabric

I demonstrated this process in an episode of the television show Uncommon Threads on DIY network back in 2006. You can be watch the episode on youtube: Uncommon Threads Epsisode #148 – Dyeing

And read a bit about the behind the scenes of the shooting here: Uncommon Threads – Dyeing to Quilt

PS – Last month I documented the process of dyeing fabric while I was doing it with a series of instagram stories. A few years ago I couldn’t be bothered with insta stories but now I’m loving them. They are like miniature blog posts that are super quick and easy.

If you are on instagram you can see the series of stories on my instagram profile in the story highlight called Dye Fab…

You will learn about the history of my plastic bins and a bit more trivia. Plus see some images of my backyard as I don’t have a dye studio here in New Zealand.

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