Dye Lots
 

I have not purchased much "new" fabric lately -

so I am not sure if this question is still relevant.


Do dye lots vary from lot to lot of fabric? And if so, are some brands/lines more prone to variations than others?

The Kona's from several years ago seemed to. It was a bit disconcerting to me to see two bolts labeled with the same color name look quite different from each other.

Yes they may vary. I'm not sure which brands are more prone than others, but I have ran into it. Recently my small quilt group decided to do a challenge where we picked 1 focal fabric and the same pattern that we all had to use and then we were free to pick all our other fabrics. The fabric we ended up choosing was a floral print from JoAnn's. One of the gals and myself made a trip to the neighboring towns to buy the floral for everyone and we noticed a big big difference. One bolt we refused to buy as it was so faded looking and the others were vibrant. If you looked closely we could see a difference in each bolt. Normally I don't buy large amounts of one fabric so it isn't a problem.

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*** Yes, they do. Dyes get changes as use over & over.
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*** Yarn always say match the dye lot. So the manufacturer knows it to.
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I have found that they do indeed vary ever so slightly. I purchased fabric for a quilt and had to get border fabric from a separate bolt because there was a slight difference and I didn't want the different dye lots in the border.

it also varies depending on which greige is used.

Yes, it does change, but that is not always a bad thing. When I was first quilting I bought black at different places. When I finished the quilt was when I saw that they were two different colors but it gave it depth rather than being a flat black. Now I sometimes intentionally buy from different dye lots just to get that small variance.

I have never noticed it with my fabric, but usually have not bought more that one time of any one thing. Now, when I was doing cross stitch years ago, I had to make sure to get enough for a project because they vary greatly.