Monday, October 1, 2012

A Little Experimentation

 

This weekend I decided to see if I could dye some pole-wrapped silk scarves and devore scarves at the same time and in the same pot. I really like how this scarf (above) turned out. The second and third attempts were not so good but I know why, which was the purpose of the experiment.

To do the blue striped scarf, I soaked it in vinegar and wrapped it around a galvanized pipe with a 4 " inside diameter and did the rubber bands and scrunching thing so I would be able to cover it with the dye solution in the biggest pot I own.  The pole just fit in the pot and I was able to get it all scrunched down at one end so the entire scarf was covered in dye solution. The pipe has a big opening that also fills with dye, which is where I put the devore scarves. There was plenty of room for two.

 
Here you can see pole in the pot on the stove with no fabric sticking out over the top of the pot.



And here's a picture of a scrunched scarf as I'm taking it out of the pot. This particular scarf is in the dye bath for the second time because the pole I used the first time was only 2 or 3 inches in diameter which meant I had to wrap the scarf in too many layers for the dye to penetrate. Lots of white spaces when it was unwrapped. So I took it off the pole and rewrapped it on the larger 4" diameter pole with the darker areas on the bottom layer since they don't really need any more dye. I also used a different color dye for this time around, hoping I get a two color scarf.  We'll see...

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