My friend Grace Howes has hosted a dye party at her house every summer for the past few years. She does a lot of dyeing, and is great at guiding newbies through the process. We work in her garage, which was pretty steamy today (we got a huge thunderstorm overnight and there was a lot of moisture in the air). She has a utility sink and three big tables she sets up where the cars usually are.
When you work with Procion dyes, you have to don a dust mask and safety goggles while you mix up the dye solution. I hate that part. But with a lot of people, you can share the task and it goes much faster.
Here’s Alisan pouring some soda ash solution on a piece of fabric:
These are Grace’s. She added some dye to one end of the fabric and put it in a bucket (on hte left side) and then put some darker dye in the other bucket (on the right) and let it seep up into the other color:
Not sure who was working on this piece, but it sure looks pretty in that blue bucket:
Trish loved those hot, steamy rubber gloves!
I was all about the blue-purple today. Here are my containers steeping in the sun:
This is my piece of cotton/linen drying on Grace’s yard:
I’m very pleased with how it turned out. Here’s a closeup of that same fabric:
Grace is so wonderful to host this party. I had to duck out a bit early to pick up one of my kids at a day camp, and didn’t do much in the way of clean up this time. (I owe you, Grace!) Here she is man-handling a table into storage:
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