Whining about Wine or is it Plum???? Hand dyeing Experiment

Newly dyed fabric on the left                                                                   Slice of fabric sample on the right

OMG!!!  Does everything have to be such a pain in my hassle???  I know I've whined about this before but MY GOSH! With the trip to my mother's cabin behind me, I thought I better get back after my Christmas wallhanging.  You know this started out being a quick little project that I was going to whip up in time to enter in an online Christmas quilt show.  Instead, its turned into this major undertaking.  The border is just a case in point.  In the hundreds and hundreds of yards of fabric I own do you think I could find just the right wine I needed for the border?  No - of course not.  Still no big deal - I mean why have a nice collection of dyes if you can't  custom dye a color you need now and again.  So I started researching  how to mix a nice muted whine and of course, pretty much the consensus is that its super hard to get just right.  Sighhhhhhhhh!

hand dyed fabric in oven - not our dinner!

After a couple of days of hmmmm-hawwwwwwwing about it - I just decided to take the plunge and guess!  For the one yard of fabric I mixed one tsp of fushia with one tsp of Kelly green adding a pinch of black.  Then I used a zip lock bag for the first time  - which I find more of a hassle then the beer cups I usually use.  It was odd working in my dining room rather than my porch, but I managed.  Still I put the whole concoction in my oven since the house is at 65 degrees this days - yes I put a little sign that warned all family members not to turn it on !!!

The result was a nice muted wine/plum color - really pretty in fact.  But still not the saturated wine I was looking for.  I had a slice of muted wine fabric to compare it to - so I had an idea of where I was heading.  After much discussion - even bringing in my husband Paul (read desperation)  - I decided that what I really wanted was a color somewhere between the two.  Soooooooooo back into the dye bath the fabric went using a tsp of strongest red and a bit of carmine red for good measure (grin).

I'll let ya know how it turns out - we'll both be surprised!