Originally Posted by
QuilterMomma
I personally think dyeing fabric is overrated. It is a lot of work. The best part, though, is that you can get the right shade you want if doing a pictorial quilt. It is so hard to find flesh toned fabric. Or those perfect shades of yellow. What medium do you use for dyeing your fabrics?
Well, it depends on what I'm dyeing. I'm planning on doing some acid dyeing with wool -- I have a large number of scarf blanks that I knit on my sister's knitting machine a few years ago, and since it doesn't do knit/purl on the edges, just stockinette, I was stuck with scarf "rolls". So I dyed a few blanks, they came out beautiful, but I was still having the dilemma of getting them to lay flat. A few weeks ago I got a brilliant idea and did a crochet edging on them, then steam pressed them flat. So now I have something like another 20 scarf blanks to dye. I do all my dyeing outside, and this weekend it's going to be around 80 degrees, so great dyeing weather!
And when I'm not doing acid dyes on protein fabrics, I do fiber reactive dyeing using PDF fabrics from Dharma Trading Co. I also plan on doing some tie-dye tshirts and other clothing articles soon. If I do dyeing for quilt fabrics, it's mostly using the parfait method -- fat quarters in a jar with various dyes poured in layers. I happen to have 17 yards of a lovely cotton sateen from Dharma that did not work for tranferring photos for a quilt project, so now it's going to get dyed instead. Sorry for the long explanation, but I do tend to get carried away with my fiber arts....