Weekend Color Explosion, Part 1

It's a beautiful sunny day with a bright blue sky. Which is extra-special, because we've had nothing but cold gray days for quite some time around here. The good weather couldn't come at a better time, because this weekend is going to be one of much dyeing and carding. On the agenda: ARTinis for future club shipments, Phat Fiber samples (OMG late! again! gah!), and if there's time left over, lots of yummy batts for the shop.

I thought I'd give you a peek into my creative process and let you see how batts come into being, from the white woolly beginning to the colorful batts you see listed in the shop. So. Here's what's going down.

I do all of my dyeing with Greener Shades heavy metal free professional acid dyes. They work great and I absolutely love them. They're one of the least toxic kinds of dye out there, so I feel comfortable dyeing with them in my kitchen, so long as I am careful. (Which for me means using gloves, a dust mask, and safety goggles when I mix the dyes, and NEVER using any of my dye implements for food).

My dyes are acid dyes, which means they'll dye any protein fiber. Protein fibers include all animal fibers (wool, mohair, angora bunny, silk, etc.) and a few synthetic fibers (Soy Silk, milk fiber, and nylon, which means both firestar and the nylon that's used to make socks more durable).

What my dyes don't do is cellulose fibers, which means natural fibers from plants (cotton, linen, hemp, flax, etc.) and a few synthetic fibers (all forms of rayon, which means Tencel, viscose, and bamboo fiber, which are all almost identical, but differ in what they're made from and are sometimes produced using slightly different techniques.) They also don't do any other synthetics, like polyester, acrylic, acetate, spandex, etc.

But that's okay, because those aren't used much for spinning anyway. The only spinning fibers that I frequently use in batts that I can't dye myself are the rayons (Tencel, bamboo, viscose). I can dye my own milk fiber, but it's easier to dye with the same kinds of dyes used on rayon, and is kind of a pain to dye with acid dyes. So I usually buy these fibers hand-dyed by other fiber artists who are set up to work with these kinds of dyes.

And of course I can't dye angelina sparkle fiber, because that's a kind of plastic that can't be dyed by mere mortals. It has to have the color added during the production process while it's still molten. Once it cools and solidifies, the color can't be changed. This is also true of a few other things, like Ingeo corn silk fiber and EcoSpun fiber made from recycled soda bottles.

But I can dye almost everything I'll ever want to spin with myself, so I'm pretty content with that. And it gives me a good excuse to buy beautiful hand-dyed fiber from other fiber artists. Which I did recently! I snagged some amazing bamboo from LushMommy on Etsy. I wanted a lot of different colors in fairly small amounts, so I snagged 2 oz. each of four of her delightful multi-colored colorways. And I love the fiber I got. Her colorways are amazing, with nice even dye jobs in a wide range of colors. You should totally check her out.

These are the colorways I picked up:

They are, from left to right: Brook, Last Call, Electric Boogaloo (light), & Faerytale.

These are going to be incorporated into several different types of batts,

so the first thing I did was separate them out into individual colors.

And now I'm going to go dye up lots and lots of wool to go with them.

Check back in a couple days to see the batts they've become!