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April 14, 2009

Kettle Dyeing!

This weekend I tried kettle dyeing roving for the first time. It was so much fun and I learned a lot from my first trials. I was familiar with the basics going into it, and I'd previously tried painting rovings, with decent results. I consulted a few online tutorials, primarily this one from Earthwhisper Fiber Arts. The most important advice I got from reading this was to add each color separately, letting each one exhaust into the fiber before adding the next. Reading that was a bit of an "Aha" moment for me because I'd always wondered how you can use multiple colors in the same pot without them mixing into a brown soup!

I have to say, I prefer this method of dyeing to painting. It requires much less space and overall I think it's quicker. My blue in the first roving (pictured above) separated into its 2 parts during the dye process, resulting in some pink that was not planned... But that's okay. It was a really good learning experience. I dyed 2 rovings, both SW Merino. I plan to spin them up so I can get an idea of how they'll look, how they'll rinse, etc.

Roving #1 - blue, green, pink, purple and gold with lots of white

Roving #2 - greens, browns, gold and yellow/orange

I can't wait to see how these spin up! I'll be doing another bunch of dyeing today, so expect more pictures to follow.

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8 comments:

goodkarma said...

oh wow! these look awesome! i can't wait to see the end products, as well. you rock.

Ariane said...

Hey! Thanks for the French comment on my blog, I founded it really cute!! I just have to say that I love what you're doing. You are really making me want to start dyeing and spinning my own yarn! Maybe this summer, when the semester ends...

Aesderina said...

WOW those look wonderful!! makes me want to kettle dye too... so much hobbies so little time

Linda said...

The dyeing is fab, are you going to sell any of your fibre?

blackmustard said...

Wow, thanks everyone for the wonderful comments! I will have more pictures to share soon :)

And Lin, in answer to your question, I will be selling rovings soon. The plan is actually to set up a second shop at the beginning of May. The details on that will be included in the May newsletter! I can't wait!

Michelle Meyers said...

Thanks for the article, well written and it worked out perfect. Hey if you write and post a lot of articles you should look at putting them on Wacanai.com(http://www.wacanai.com/intro). They have a huge database of articles and you can search by a bunch of different topics, plus they will recommend other similar articles to you. I know that you can link your site to it too. Thanks, peace.

knitterPat said...

Hi,
That's very beautiful.
I'm new in dyeing.
Hope to see more of your end products.

Lydia said...

The link to earthwhisper fiber arts tutorial doesn't work. Wondering if you cd email me the instructions. kendrick4343@gmail.com. Thanks. Love your roving and have always wanted to try kettle dyeing. :-)