Iceblossom

I cannot claim original credit for most of the hand dyes, I bought a huge bag at the thrift store for $7.99! Sadly they had been starched but the dyes never properly fixed. I've been at home for the last two weeks while my car has been in the shop and I have been boiling the fabrics to heat set them and removing the excess dye. I think Rit dyes were definitely used but others I'm not so sure, pretty sure inks were also used. Most of the fabrics are cottons but some are rayon, they require different products to both dye and treat. The yellows look more orange in the photo, I made some of them myself using Rit Golden Yellow, because I'm a glutton for punishment and still have some white ready to be treated I might get some Lemon Yellow too.

If I had not been home without a car I would have given up on this project after the first day! When you look at each color pile, that's about 6 hours of boiling and washing and treating. Would not have been near the effort had it been done correctly for the products/fabrics used at the time of dying.

One of the ladies in my small group also went through a home dying phase and she still has plenty of the various chemicals along with Retayne and Synthrapol and I think I'm going to take her up on them to fix the rest of the bag. It's been at least 20 years since I got rid of my own supplies so I've been using heat, vinegar, salt, and lots of water.

Edit: I'm much more about using natural materials for dying and was originally going to just tea dye/vegetable dye the neutrals but with the artificial dyes of the colors, I decided that would just dull everything down and decided to go with school bus yellow to orange instead.

I always enjoy the people who go outside the box on their selections for a mystery quilt, and it just so happened I had a big bag of fabric in the right tones and an opening on my quilting schedule so this time I get to be one of the outliers -- wish me luck!