Going Wild with Dyeing

It has literally been years since I last dyed any fabric. I know exactly how long because I did a whole lot of it during the first summer we lived here in 1996. Dyeing was one of my favourite things to do but while I was playing away. John mentioned the fact that we now had a septic tank (I had to ask him what it was! what a townie!) with an overflow in the field. And when I had a look I could see that coloured rinse water flowing merrily down into a nearby stream. Not good! And of course the dye also kills off the bacteria that keep the septic tank functioning. So no more dyeing was done and instead I bought fabric dyed by other people. But yesterday I had the chance to dye in a friend's home that is connected to the mains drainage system and oh what fun we had.

We dyed mainly cotton but I had one piece of what we both now think is a velvet silk cotton mix or maybe viscose. What ever it is it has a marvellous sheen to it and I'm sharing the pictures of the finished piece here.

Yes, this is just one piece of cloth and as you can tell I went wild with the colours using most all of them on this one item. And the results far exceeded my expectations. A lots of ohhhhhhhhhhhs and ahhhhhhhhhhs happened when we took it out of the dye bath and started rinsing it. I have an idea of what I'm going to do with it but it will be quite some time before I can make myself put the scissors into it!

 For the moment it just makes me so happy looking at it and discovering all the amazing details.