Saturday, June 6, 2009

Dyeing for mullens



For the mullen leaves I scrunched up 1/2 yard of natural Pendleoton wool in a pan and then did the following:


This is OLIVE DRAB....
but somehow when they made up the label they goofed on the spelling.


in measuring cup 1 I added 1/64 tsp olive drab and just a bit of citric acid....you could use vinegar


in measuring cup 2 I added 1/32 tsp olive drab and just a bit of CA

in measuring cup 3 I added 1/16 tsp olive drab and just a bit of CA

to these measuring cups I added 1 cup boiling water to each.

I should also note that I added about 2 cups of water to the scrunched up wool in my pan and put it on simmer on my stove top.


Once the water was warmed up on the stove I added my 3 cups of dye down the wool parallel to the selvedge from light to dark...massaged them into the wool with my new gloves I picked up at Home Depot a few weeks back. HINT: when buying gloves to dye with....
get a size larger than you need.....
You'll love me for this tip!

After the wool massage I sprinkled the wool with a bit of salt...like you would a roast and then covered it with foil. HINT: covering your pots or pans with foil keeps the heat in....processing your wool a bit faster and keeping your home cooler in this warm weather.

Here is the result....a little more blue than I anticipated, but not bad.Since I'm no quitter I tried making up two more formulas that I cooked in pots rather than pans that resulted in these wools. I was most satisfied with the wool on the bottom....not too blue, but still shadowy. I'll share those recipes with you as time allows.


Stay tuned tomorrow when I'll share some of my hooking.


Go forth and be creative,


Tammy

3 comments:

  1. crikey! what a lot of measuring and ... well ... chemistry - I am really tempted to try some dyeing - but do you have to be a scientist to get it right? how do you measure such tiny amounts????

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  2. Katie, You just need the right tools. I think the dye measuring tools are called "grey dye spoons". You can get them from Cushings or Fraziers. It's a bit addicting!

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  3. What a GREAT mottled green you came up with! Love it?
    Where do you ge the Pro-Chem dyes?

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