Fabric Over-dyeing

I have been over-dyeing some fabrics this week. They are fabrics that I have previously dyed that were not my favorite and have not sold in our booths. On some of the them the color was too flat, some had unflattering color combinations and still others had tones that were not desirable.

My solution? Throw them into another dye bath...but first some of the pieces are given rubber band resists so that the old color will show through.


I love the depth of color in these.

I'm also about to start dyeing wool roving for my handmade pincushions. I purchased the roving from the wonderful Webs in Northampton, Mass. This morning I went out to find a big crock pot. Who knew they now had 7 quart crock pots? The one on the left is our big kitchen crock pot, and the one on the right is the new one for dyeing wool (no food will ever touch it). It's huge and perfect for my plan!

Over-dye Day

Today I have been over-dyeing some hand-dyed fabrics that I was not pleased with. I used to think that over-dye was a last resort to save fabric, but now I know that it's a wonderful way to add depth of color to fabric. The piece above was a flat turquoise and quite boring until I dyed it in indigo.

Some of the lighter pieces were over-dyed with Wedgewood. You can't see them in this photo, but each piece has an undertone of the original color.


It's also fun to rubber band resist these fabrics so that the original color is preserved. It can be mighty messy removing rubber bands from dye-soaked fabric, but the results are worth it...


This piece is still in the rinsing stage, but the color is just what I hoped for.

This is a great way to revive fabrics I would not otherwise have appreciated.

Handwork

Today our Athens Sugar Bees met and I had time to finish a hand-sewing project and make two felted pincushions from felted wool sweater pieces...

The fabric under the pincushions is one of the over-dyed black pieces I worked on this week. This particular black dye has a blue hue, which I like much better than the red or green based black dyes. I'll get some better photos of those dyed fabrics tomorrow, but here's another one...

It's pretty obvious what the fabric looked like before I over-dyed it. Not so attractive "before", but lovely "after".