Dyeing experiment…..Spiral tie dyeing fiber

Posted by: unknownstar on: March 31, 2009

In: crafting | dyeing | making
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I have had a few days of being completely run down and unwell (no surprise there) but feeling much better yesterday morning I seemed to be able to get an awful lot done in one day. I cleaned, hoovered, tidyed up and even found time for some dyeing.
Over on Ravelry there is a dye along, with the theme of spiral dyeing, some people knew what this was, but having no clue I googled it. The amount of tie dye videos really inspired me (I should have been a hippy) so this seemed the natural way for me to go with this dyeing experiment.

After I soaked my fiber in water and vinegar, I rolled the fiber up into a spiral, and used some plain handspun to tie it up in a few places

I had already mixed up the dyes I was going to use, of yellow, red and blue so they were all ready for my little experiment.

I dipped the spiral of fiber into each of the colours, and let it soak for a few minutes, before dipping into the next colour. I re-dipped into the red after the blue as the colour was quite pale in comparison, and I wanted a deeper colour.

This is what it looked like before I steamed it, I gave it alittle squidge to try and blend the dyes alittle.

Here is what I ended up with after it had been steamed, now it has been soaked and dried over night I am quite happy with my results, although I still have a fair bit of white throughout the fiber (I quite like this effect) if I do this again I think I will let the fiber sit in the dye for longer so it hopefully soaks up more of the dye

And here is what it looks like braided up, you can see the amount of undyed fiber more here, but I really like the effect, and will definetly try this again.