This has been a week!!!!!!!!!!!! I won’t bend your ear about politics – it’s just way too surreal for words. Like people just found out the president is missing …………. everyone must be the three blind monkeys???

I can’t take anymore, so it’s time to dye. I managed to dye 6 yards of hemp knit fabric this week. I still have a problem. My containers aren’t large enough to stir the fabric (I say that although I didn’t try hard) so my “solid” colors aren’t solid. I’m thinking I’m going to overdye them again. More dye and more manipulation should do the trick.

My goal now is to dye some multi-colored fabrics like these:

I’ve been dyeing fabrics since 1987 when I first started quilting. I couldn’t find the colors I wanted. I dyed many fabrics for my quilt exhibited at The Janice Charach Epstein Memorial Museum Gallery in 1993 entitled The Wall. Hopefully, I can find a photograph of that (you have no idea how disorganized my photos are).

In the late 1990s, Escher was all the rage. My good friend, Beverly Maxvill designed an “Escher” quilt for me. Looking closely, you will see sailboats, a swan, and flags. I used my hand-dyed fabrics in this quilt.

I’ve mentioned before that I haven’t dyed fabric here except twice ………… I moved into my husband’s house when we married and I didn’t want to mess up the kitchen. Dye sticks something awful to beige Formica countertops. I have decided that I can be neat. Nah. I’ve decided that I have waited long enough for my laundry sink (sitting in the garage) to be installed and I’m just going to dye fabrics.

My goal when dyeing is to not end up with brown all over the fabric. Brown is NOT an inspiring color. But if you allow blue/orange, green/red, yellow/purple, and any shade related to these ……….. to run together when the cloth is wet, you will have brown. Ugly.

I found that if I sprinkled dye on my cloth and then sprayed it with soda ash and water combination, the dyes wouldn’t run. Of course, I didn’t put yellow and purple or any of the other colors on the cloth at the same time. Once the first set of dyes were processed, I would wash and dye the fabrics. Then they get dyed AGAIN. This method of over-dyeing made it possible for me to have clean, crisp colors with no horrid browns to cut out!

This is an example of cloth that was dyed twice. The colors haven’t run together unless I wanted them to!

Not only do I like the results, but dyeing in this manner is simple and takes only a couple of days to end up with fabrics I can use. I think that’s the whole point!