Dyeing with Chino and Bosenberry - Off the Wall Friday

The temperatures hit the mid 90's here on Lake Erie, so you know what that means.  Yep -  you guessed it - a little hand dyeing!   I took a  break from the fall quilt (which is almost, almost done!) to take advantage of the humid temps since tomorrow the high is only going to be in the upper 50's.  Sighhh - life on a great lake! (Not to mention I will NOT subject you to another blog post on that quilt - grin)

The colors of the day were Chino, Storm Grey, Boysenberry, Violet and Chartreuse.  I've decided that I'm going to have to start setting up some rules when I pick hand dyeing colors.  I'm not allowed to do any dyeing unless I do at least one neutral - one dark and one light.  This is the same rule I had when I shopped for commercial quilt fabric.  I mean if you don't buy one neutral - one dark and one light - you end up with a stash of medium fabrics which is very pretty but not very practical.


Luckily, all my fabric was ready.  I had scoured up my Joanne Fabrics finds and cut up the left over Arrowmont pfd Test Fabrics - got out the red solo cups and got after it!  After listening to Elizabeth Barton's lecture on safety in mixing dyes, I now do it on my open air wrap around porch.  But gosh it was sure easier when she did the mixing for me!!   I tried to do the math before hand so I would mix only what I was using and came pretty darn close.

What I forgot was to don my gloves before mixing.  Ugh!!  Didn't remember till  half way through.  Now normally that wouldn't be such a big deal, right?!  I mean purple fingers will only be a testimony to how artsy I am and make me look more legit as a real artist.  BUT tonight is Teacher night and now everyone will know that I was too dumb to remember my gloves! I'll give them a good lemon soak but I'm not holding out too much hope!

So the results are in 

• The chino gradations are marvelous - so glad I did half yds - too funny that its on the $2 yd yellow fabric from Joann's
• Boysenberry is gorgeous raspberry hot pink - super pretty!
• Storm grey gradations came out great too - finally a grey that is just my idea of grey!
• The Violet needs some work - I'm still getting blues and purples and not a nice solid Violet
• The Chartreuse isn't really chartreuse - it came out really - really green so I'm going to have to try out those again.

So what have you been up to creatively?