experiment report

Well, the experiment with direct application of activated dye on silk produced a rather pretty veil, but very clearly I did not thicken the dye enough. The colors wandered rather more than I wanted them to.

The black test was a major oops moment... the veil had already been dyed once in a soda ash bath for quite a long time. It apparently "used up" all its dye sites, since the black dye I applied made NO impression on the veil at all! It entirely rinsed off. Really kind of weird experience.

I'll try again in a different situation sometime.

experiments

As long as I'm doing these fire veils, I decided to do a couple of experiments. I took the failed raspberry half-circle (came out blotchy) and I've wrapped it on a pole. Now, the rule of thumb for black is that black procion MX dyes will not give a black-black on silk. Normally when I dye black I use an acid dye, usually Jacquard's, in a pot on the stove.

But I had to wonder, if I was putting black over another color, would it be black enough? So I mixed up some black procion MX with urea water, soda ash, and some SuperClear. Now, here's something interesting... did you know SuperClear could get moldy? I didn't. It does. Don't think I've had the thickener out since I was dyeing cotton last summer. Maybe it should be stored in the fridge. Anyway, I thickened the black and soaked the wet raspberry silk. Tomorrow I'll be able to report just how black it looks.

I also did something I've been wanting to do for a while. I don't have room to paint silk veils. I literally can't spread out three yards of anything anywhere in the house. So some designs that other dyers find very simple, I find very hard. It occurred to me one day that I had never tried the simplest possible option... scrunching a veil only until it fit the largest container I have and doing direct dye application. Sooo... I've got a veil in now, having applied some gray, blue, and blue-green dyes, just out of curiosity. We'll see how it turns out.

emergency silk

Well, Ayperi collected two more students for her class, so first I hustled to make raspberry and grape black-edged veils for R, and now I am anxiously awaiting more blanks so I can do some fire half-ovals for D.

But right now I'm going to send you off to see some really beautiful snow-dyed fabrics on Beth's blog. Go on, go on! They are fabulous!

Immersion

So, between 12/27 and 1/3 I dyed sixteen veils. Sixteen veils in a week! Ai ai ai. Nine of them were in the same dye mixture, which made it possible to dye them concurrently -- not all in one bath, because they were low water immersion, but they could all be rinsed and washed together safely. I did four one day and five the next.

A few new things came into my process this time around. First of all, I switched from vinegar to citric acid solution for my presoak. I definitely noted brighter colors on the 8mm silk with the slightly more acidic citric acid. (And SO much less smelly.) I ordered several pounds more from Dharma right away.

Secondly, I gave up doing so much hand rinsing. On the theory that it used less water, I would spend a lot of time doing initial rinsing in the sink. Well... I don't know that it was actually using less water. It would take a long, long time and many buckets full. And I realized that I would just get a better rinse letting the fabric soak in a bigger volume of water, especially given some discussions on dye forums. So now I just do a short initial rinse in the sink and go straight to a washing machine load with Synthropol -- and I got great results.

I did almost make a grievous error while dyeing the last two veils. Amber had ordered two black half circles with green ribbon edges. I dyed them up green in a bucket, rinsed and dried, and then prepared to mask them and overdye in black. JUST as I was about to put them in the black vat... I realized I masked them backwards! I would have produced green veils with black edges! Whew, that was a narrow escape. That'll teach me to watch Doctor Who while masking veils. :-D

progress, progress

So far on my winter vacation (vacation! ha! vacation!) I've dyed three rectangular veils and four half ovals. The three rectangles (2 in 8mm silk, 1 in 5mm) were Christmas gifts for dear friends. For one of them it is her first veil ever, and I hope it will behave nicely for her. For another it was an unusual color for her collection. The last was a piece for a friend who simply loves silk -- wraps herself up in it whenever possible -- and she's been wanting a piece in cool colors for a while. So I combined a rich purple, a very dark blue, and a jade green for her. I'm not utterly pleased with what the jade green had to say for itself, but hey, she loved it, so all is well.

Yesterday's four veils were part of the giant order for Ayperi, and I have five more resting in dye at the moment. Yesterday I was super-efficient and did them very assembly-line, but frankly that was a bit too much standing for my back, so today I'm taking it a bit more slowly. It's really strange to be doing so many veils in the same color combination! Her students each chose from a list, and sure enough, four of them all chose the same thing (a dark blue and purple combination I call "royalty").

After those are done I have a quite different project for tomorrow, as I won't be doing low water immersion at all -- instead I'll do a tub dye pass on a pair of veils in green and then overdye them with black for a "ribbon edge" effect. It'll be quite refreshing after this parade of small containers!

apres Ayperi, le deluge

Well, here's one way to suddenly have a lot of dye work:

Ayperi decides to have a double veil class in January.

Ayperi inquires about half circle veil pairs from me.

Vashti explains that she has no true half circle veils.

Ayperi decides that's okay, orders a pair of "semi ovals" from Vashti.

Ayperi sends Vashti an email that she has five students who each want a pair of "semi ovals" for the January class! That's ten veils!

Vashti is extremely glad she's taking some vacation the week of Christmas... :-D

reactions worth 1000 words

So, yet another custom veil done with no photograph to show of it. But after I ironed it last night, well, it was bedtime. And after work I had to rush off with it to dance to leave it for AJ at the studio. No photo time! But I did get to show the veil off to some of my studio friends. I got a lot of compliments on it! This veil was a deep red-orange with pale orange streaks edged with black. I named it "Dream of Pele" because it looked so much like a lava flow bounded by black rock. After displaying it to four or five people in the dressing room, I folded it back up (all four yards of it) and then my teacher came in... so I unfolded it again and got a "wow" out of her.

I was bemoaning my inability to keep up with the photography side of this hobby, and she pointed out that quite a number of pictures of my veils do exist -- in photos of dancers. For example the local trio Raya Alimah has performed with three of my veils (above). So it's possible I could talk to them and their photographer for permission to use their photo on my (as yet empty) website. And there's also the idea of possibly having a "Vashti Veils Convention" and getting a whole bunch of local dancers with my veils together and taking pictures of them! That would just rock. No idea how we'd do it -- outside might be best, in the spring? Sigh. One day.