Dye experiment | pink + coral + ecru

Results are in

Faded acrylic black paint, procion mx dyes for everything else

Not bad, not bad for using up dye and giving it a crack. Getting better at this dye gig. Procion mx dye is definitely my preferred method.  Nice to not be frantically dyeing anymore because I understand some principles. Like dye generally doesn't even stick or stay under most conditions.  You need to get the condition to make a colour stick.  Even beetroot red doesn't stay.  I've been hand squeezing the stuff for weeks now via tea towel.  Often leaving the tea towel to dry without washing.  Once washed, it makes the fabric ecru brown colour.

Anyway, details:

• 7m of the peach colour created from that baby pink roll sold to me + left over coral pink (dharma) + left over ecru (dharma).  It wasn't much.  I had about say 1/2 of the 2oz ecru tub left and 1/8 of the 2oz tub coral pink.  The coral pink is intense, intense bright.  The colour change produced on the original saturated baby pink was like, good that it's not baby pink, but man I need to be African to wear this fluro-ish thing.  So I ended up using up all the ecru to tone it down.
• I did the mixing of the powered procion dye in warm++ tap water.  This dissolves the powder very well.  I've made too many mistakes previously by assuming it was dissolved enough then getting some really bright freckles on the fabric from undissolved bits.  Looks fine, like fine bright confetti if that's what you want.
• The wet colour was darker than the AC sunset swatch below, which is a good indicator, but still I knew it wasn't dark enough while wet.  Oh well, at least I made good use of the materials involved, and used it up.
• Threw in white t-shirts that I didn't have good success with previously using other experimental methods.  These soaked up the left over dye and now they are faint, gentle baby pinks.  Which I probably don't mind using somewhere.  I just can't use the purchased baby pink roll.  It's too clearly-baby-pink-for-babies.
• Procion mx really is the way to go for at home dyeing with fantastic durability and colourfastness.  Acrylic black paint obviously works really well with my natural/cream colour fabric... but generally the other colours I tried (magenta, blue, green) just didn't really show up.  Don't know why.  Will discover that some day.  Then again, I did never let any of them dry before washing.  I washed almost immediately.  But black acrylic paint worked really well.  The other colours barely showed up, even on light coloured fabric.
• Procion mx dye is just easier to work with.  No heating up water, no adding salt.  Just add soda ash, which you can make yourself.  I put a tray of pure baking soda at the bottom of the oven, and just leave it there while other things roast.  Depending on the use of the oven, I might leave it in there for multiple roasts just to make sure it's turned into soda ash.  Soda ash is a different look, once you know what you're looking for.  It is like super fine like ash, moves with great agility like dry sand when you tip it, and does not smell good if you accidentally breathe it.  It is super light and prone to be accidentally breathed in.  I prefer to transfer it into a jar while outside the house.  When you add soda ash to water it makes the water feel slimy like a bar of wet soap.  Even after I dip my hands in that solution and wash them in soap, it can still have that wet-soap-feeling.  It kind of sticks to you for a little bit.  Nevertheless, it is this solution that makes the most amazing environment for the procion mx dye to stick to the fabric.  Other important tips to remember: procion mx dye works in lukewarm water, not hot.  Use warm++ to dissolve.  Dye in lukewarm water.  They say procion mx dye needs one cup of soda ash to one gallon of water but I've seen a blog of someone experimenting with 1/2 and 1/3 that amount of soda ash without much difference at all.  But soda ash, being a derivative of baking soda, is cheap.  Especially when you're making it as a byproduct of your roast dinner - totally cheap.
• Direct mx dyes also work amazing and also go way further for the dollar, but there's always a bit of a I wonder how it's going to last over many, many hot washes - because the instructions still recommend cooler washes even after the fixative.  So that doesn't inspire confidence.  So far I can't say there's any major problem - at least not to me.  I do use the fixative that goes with it.  You can see the colour in the water literally disappear mostly because it bonds the colour to the fabric.  So, it's definitely good enough, but I need a few more months or a year to report on how the colour fastness goes.  But so far so good.  As Paula Burch writes, it has the problem of bleeding forever, which is reduced by the fixative.  So, I've been washing in warm++ water just because I like things clean over beautiful (and who cares it's just a thing anyway) (and I like to test limits) (and who cares you can just dye it again anyway if all else fails).  I did see on my fur skirt that it did expel dye and dye my white signature tag, because this dye works to fix into fabric in hot water.  So I am yet to see if this keeps happening again and again. I think it's gotten less.  As an overall practice I could just get into gentle cold wash to retain colour + quick hot dry to retain shape.  I can't be bothered with different instructions for every garment.    And I suppose another safeguard using direct dyes is just to do colours that you don't care if the colour fades.  Many colours look good faded.... brown, blue. 

Alabama Chanin sunset swatch

So the attempt is turned out to be a shade of the Alabama Chanin sunset swatch.  It's not as saturated.  Of course I would have wanted to get a closer result but it's still this lovely, lovely gentle peach that contains colours that are in my skin.

Since I actually haven't made a garment out of this baby pink est. 40m roll, I noticed for the first time only yesterday it's not particularly soft or drapey.  It's quite firm for cotton jersey and doesn't have a whole lot of stretch.  So it's good for pants, but not limited to pants.  Nothing is limited.  I was thinking of creating a single layer gore dress with around 13 panels with the peach.  Will see.  But it gets me thinking of more deliberate uses for the remaining fabric.  Probably jackets, pants, appliqué.  Will look good dyed in browns, ochres, etc.  Fifty metres of fabric actually can disappear pretty fast.

Update: currently working on stencils Little Stars, Sylvan, Job's Flowers.  All turning out pretty successful.  Does take time to put them together, but might as well.  I mean, hand sewing is so boring you can do it while doing something else.  And when you're spending so much time on sewing, you might as well make sure what you're sewing is something that you find interesting.