A Good Day to Dye

experiment report

noreply@blogger.com (Vashti) — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 02:53:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Vashti) — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Vashti) — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 17:12:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Vashti) — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 20:30:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Vashti) — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 20:19:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Vashti) — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 00:01:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Vashti) — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 05:14:00 +0000

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.

we have the tools

noreply@blogger.com (Vashti) — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 21:27:00 +0000

Well, one of my local dancer customers had contacted me about a 4 yard veil a bit ago and today I thought I better get that done going for her, as she needs it quite soon. My usual problem with 4 yarders is that I must hem them myself. Sometimes I even make them unhemmed to avoid this. :-D

Okay, that's not quite correct. Some dancers have told me they prefer them unhemmed because they like max flutter in the ends. But doing that does worry me as they do tend to fray. (Every once in a while on dance boards, somebody comes out and says "Oh, if you have the right silk, they never fray!" Would sure like to know what the heck silk that is.) So I got out my sewing machine today to hem up a bunch of 4yarders to have on hand.

Except... hey, I forgot! I have a new sewing machine! I got a lovely new Janome last year on clearance and have only gotten to use it for one or two projects. Now was my chance to try out its rolled-hem foot and see how it could do on thin 5mm silk. Result: very nice! For one thing it didn't try to suck the fine stuff down into the feed dogs at the beginning. No tension problems. Beautiful even tiny stitches. Unfortunately there's still the problem of correctly feeding the fabric into the rolled-hem foot, which requires some finesse. But overall I think this will be a great improvement... and the likelihood of my 4 yard veils being hemmed is going to increase dramatically.

Martha Stewart rocks

noreply@blogger.com (Vashti) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 17:51:00 +0000

Here's why I say Martha Stewart rocks. She has a dyer on her show who does scrunch dyes. Don't get me wrong, I like shabd's stuff. But Martha apparently made scrunch dyeing sound like some ground-breaking new thing. It's not. Then on her website she gives "directions" for making a similar item yourself (here's an excerpt):

3. Prepare up to six different colored dyes for the gathered areas of the leggings. In each squeeze bottle, mix 2 teaspoons dye with 4 ounces water, then add 4 more ounces to fill.

Then later:

6. Mix three more colors of dye in similar tones (for example: yellow, light yellow, dark yellow) for the background. One by one, completely saturate the leggings with these colors.

Okay, so we have NINE colors of dye, and we have 8 ounces of dye for each. That's 72 oz of dye! And in this craft project, you are dyeing... one pair of cotton leggings.

If I dye multiple tshirts, I calculate about 8 to 12 oz of liquid dye per shirt.

A person following Martha's instructions is going to buy massively more dye (and probably squeeze bottles) than she needs to dye one pair of leggings.

So you rock, Martha! Way to keep dye suppliers in business!

where the heck I've been

noreply@blogger.com (Vashti) — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 04:41:00 +0000

I've been plenty discouraged about dyeing, that's what. I went through all my inventory and added up all my expenses this year... yuck. I am horribly in the hole. And there's just no room in our house to store all this stuff.

So, I've started by having a fire sale on all my dyed clothes. While I love tie dyeing shirts and the shibori kimono tops were a hoot, they just didn't sell. So I won't be expanding into clothes again. I've given some away to friends, put some in my own closet, and vowed to only dye clothing for myself or in one-offs on commission henceforth. The clothing projects also brought out the worst in a few of my fans, I have to say -- these are people I love and care for dearly, but they got a case of the "if only"'s. If only I had that shirt with more purple... if only I had that with less blue... if only... and that turned into "Next time you dye a bunch of those, do one like THIS and I'll buy it." Multiple people have said that... I tried very hard to explain that if the current ones didn't sell, there would be no next time, but they seemed deaf to this fact. It's one thing if someone wants a custom item and are willing to put down 50% -- it's something else again when they really only have a passing interest.

I also got very frustrated by people who would tell me "that shirt's priced a little high." Well, yes... for Target. But the price you are suggesting I sell it for is equal to the cost of the blank shirt I bought. I learned quickly to just not respond to those comments. If they really wouldn't pay more than $8 for a shirt, they need to shop at a thrift store.

I have also been toying with ceasing the dye work all together. It's very hard on my back, for one thing. And while I love it, it is both space and time consuming. But all I had to do was mention to a few friends that I might stop entirely... and suddenly I have custom orders on hand. Hmm.

the month off

noreply@blogger.com (Vashti) — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 15:30:00 +0000

Well, I had a month off of dye work. It was a pretty nice little "vacation" and I'm starting to feel much more creative now. I haven't yet gotten anything up on Etsy -- instead I've been working on jewelry skilz. I took a fun workshop on wire-wrapping cabochons -- now that's something that's going to require practice to get the results you want. (Just like dye work.) Unfortunately the base material (sterling silver wire) is a little more expensive that powdered dye and vinegar!

I did finally find a good source for citric acid locally. I wanted to try citric acid instead of vinegar because it's easy to make your baths more or less acid with powdered citric acid without changing the volume of the bath. I didn't want to buy it from Dharma Trading because the shipping costs essentially doubled the price of the powder. My local source does not sell it as cheaply as Dharma... but the total price is still a bit cheaper than Dharma's price with shipping. Sadly, my local source is Whole Foods, and I'm not sure if I can continue shopping there after their CEO said some unpalatable things about health care reform (Like, "Repeal government mandates regarding what insurance companies must cover. These mandates have increased the cost of health insurance by billions of dollars. What is insured and what is not insured should be determined by individual customer preferences and not through special-interest lobbying." This guy clearly does not understand what a struggle it's been for people to get "obvious" things covered by health insurance -- for example, birth control pills, which are possibly one of the highest-benefit drugs in wide use today.)

I do have a cute little dye job coming up. A friend has bought a cotton "dog hoodie" as a gift and wants it dyed up. It's as small as some of the baby clothes I've done -- must be a tiny dog!

well, so much for that!

noreply@blogger.com (Vashti) — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 21:42:00 +0000

I was a little sad that I wouldn't have time to photograph all my new veils before I sold some at the local workshop. But no worries! I can still photograph them!

Because... I only sold three veils. Two were the two semicircles I posted pics of a while back, and the other was a black veil with a teal edge. Yes, business was that bad. Otherwise I sold a couple pieces of costume jewelry and a shirt. Le sigh.

So, I'm in the hole for my supplies this year. I guess I can't be too surprised... people just have a lot less money to spend these days. At least I didn't have to pay much of anything for gas and accommodations since the workshop was literally 10 minutes from my house.

I'll have to get these all photographed... and then maybe I will actually, FINALLY, list something on etsy. What a concept!

It was an eight veil weekend

noreply@blogger.com (Vashti) — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 02:30:00 +0000

I'm trying to build my stock back up before the Isidora workshop at the end of the month, so I took advantage of the holiday weekend to get a lot of silk into a lot of dye.

Two things I ran entirely out of were blue veils and "fire" veils, so I decided to do a series of each. I really enjoy doing several variations on a theme all at the same time -- it's easy to see the difference between them. For the "fire" veils I did one based around a red dye, one around fuchsia, and one around coral, giving me a pretty nice range, though the fuchsia veil did not have quite as much strong pink as I would have liked.

For the blue veils I worked with a very dark blue dye called "Midnight", a less-inky, more clear-blue dye called "Sapphire", and a dye that's new to me called "Caribbean." I paired each with a different blue in a lighter tone. These also turned out prettily, but oh! I hate rinsing turquoise based dyes. I rinse and rinse and rinse. Darlene's advice to heat my silk more and let it cool completely before rinsing has helped on most other colors, but not turquoise. It's so tedious.

I finished a veil that was half-done, as well... I dyed a veil black and protected one long edge. After much dithering I dyed the edge teal. It looks very fine wet; hope it looks decent dry! My other surprise on that front was a veil I dyed using Colorhue dyes with an arashi shibori wrap. It was truly hideous while still damp, but dry... well... maybe it's not so bad? I will reserve judgement.

Now I need to go rinse out some rayon jackets I wrapped on the pole this afternoon. Very curious to see how they turn out!

alas poor butterfly

noreply@blogger.com (Vashti) — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 01:38:00 +0000

Well, the technique I planned to use to create the mourning cloak butterfly - inspired veil is not going to work. I intended to use a shibori "capping" method to protect circular/oval areas of the veil, but the best way to draw up these areas accurately is by using a running stitch around them and pulling them up. I tried this on a sample of my veil fabric... while I was able to protect the area as planned, pulling up the stitches on that featherweight fabric damaged it considerably! Despite using quite a fine thread, there were obvious holes left behind. Yuck. So much for that plan.

I also played around more with the Colorhue dyes today, trying to see if I could get a reasonable black on silk. Their initial recommendation was 12-15 drops in a half cup of water. This turned out to be about 1/4t. For black I tried 1/2t, which gave me a sort of dark gray/blue color. I doubled again to 1 t. Still not a very black black -- a pleasant very dark blue/gray, but just not black. Now, supposing that I need to immerse a whole veil... that would probably take at least four cups of water at a bare minimum... with a little math that means 8t of the black dye would be needed to obtain a not quite black color. That's about 1 1/4 ounces per black dye bath.

Did I mention that the Colorhue dye is $30 for 8 ounces?

I believe I'll just be using up the rest of my sample set. It was a lovely idea, having an "instant" dye that requires no heat on silk, but... it just doesn't work quite well enough.

(And, incidentally, DO NOT SPILL this dye on anything you care about. It's very very hard to clean up.)

veil inspiration

noreply@blogger.com (Vashti) — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 14:28:00 +0000

I want to make a veil out of this:

butterfly

coming off hiatus

noreply@blogger.com (Vashti) — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 19:32:00 +0000

I haven't done much dye work lately due to a nasty cold I picked up -- got sick around June 8 and I'm still coughing "residually" now. It was a real energy killer because it was so hard to get any sleep with that cough. I did manage to make a few pieces of jewelry... nice to have a hobby that can be done whilst half-reclined on one's couch.

Of course this means I'm behind on dye work for my next vending opportunity -- Isidora Bushkovski will be teaching here in town at the end of July, and I've got a sales table. I need to make blue and "fire" veils madly since I was cleaned out of those in LaCrosse in April. I'm not going to try to both vend and take the workshop this year... it's just so hard to do that. Not to mention it means I have to have my husband's help... he's incredibly sweet about helping me, but I know he has other things to do with his time.

Well, since time is at a premium, it's time to try out those Colorhue "instant set" dyes. It's just me and the shibori pole in my spare time for a week or two... wish me luck.

half circle ombre 2

noreply@blogger.com (Vashti) — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 01:37:00 +0000

half circle ombre 2
Originally uploaded by tigerb.

I'm still fooling around with these color-to-color (or as I think of them, bucket to bucket) ombre dyes. I'm doing the math and timing things carefully, but although they are pretty they are not quite as smooth as I'd like. I'd love to make gradations as smooth as the items here, but I'm not quite sure how.

shibori detail

noreply@blogger.com (Vashti) — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 01:29:00 +0000

shibori detail
Originally uploaded by tigerb.

Here's just a corner of the silver & black veil I made for K. I won't post a photo of the whole thing... it's still on its way to her in the mail... but here's a little preview. I just love how it looks marbled.

how it all went

noreply@blogger.com (Vashti) — Fri, 15 May 2009 19:03:00 +0000

It's been way too crazy around here to write an update!

Sales at the LaCrosse show were okay, but not spectacular. I sold six veils -- including every blue thing I had on the table. Some shows it's green; some shows it's purple... this show it was blue.

I've also gotten a two-veil commission out of that show; have to finish them up this weekend and pop them in the mail. In addition I need to finish my black-on-silver shibori piece, a commission/birthday present. Having a cold last weekend put me behind on just about everything.

And tomorrow... a garage sale. Scarves, wraps, and little odds and ends that haven't sold at a show will all go on a table next to the knickknacks and old videos, hoping to find a home.

down to the wire

noreply@blogger.com (Vashti) — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 15:48:00 +0000

Well, I have around 20 veils to take to La Crosse this weekend. They're all ironed... but none got photographed. Boo! I wish there was a more time-efficient way to take the photos -- but to snap them all would take an entire evening, and I just did not have one to spare this week. Sunday was taken up with frenzied cleaning of the house, as friend KB came over to help out. (Then we collapsed and ate Indian food.) I had to put in some long days at work this week as well.

All things considered I'm just pleased I have enough stock to take north, but it really doesn't help my portfolio to dye-and-sell!

Here's hoping people will want to buy my pretties tomorrow....

veil dyeing vs. my back

noreply@blogger.com (Vashti) — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 19:46:00 +0000

Well, my back wasn't too pleased about the combination of multiple ballroom classes last week PLUS a multi-hour bellydance workshop on Saturday PLUS a lot of sitting and driving related to Easter Sunday festivities. Monday it basically stiffened up and refused to move.

(And by the way... I don't really appreciate it when a dancer I have known for 10 minutes tells me to fix my dance posture to avoid back pain. Especially when she has not seen my dance posture and is not a doctor, nor does she play one on TV. Also especially when you're someone who is willing to wear a hipscarf out to a restaurant at lunch time. I think that's tacky.)

So anyway, I haven't done much dyeing this week. I did do a big 4yd pink-and-white number that I'm hoping Tzigane will buy from me in LaCrosse, as she mentioned she's looking for one. But other than that, no. I need to take a good inventory tonight and figure out what else is a "must-have" for the show; I'll do those and no more. Leaning over the sink is not a great thing right now.

conservation of buckets

noreply@blogger.com (Vashti) — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 15:40:00 +0000

Phew. 13 veils done for the LaCrosse show.

Last night I got out the two curved veils I bought on spec. They aren't half-circles... they're more like half-ovals, because they're not quite wide enough. But I'm darned if I'm going to hem my own half circle veils... what a nightmare! So I'm working with what I have.

I wasn't quite sure what to do with them, actually. The Shibori Borealis half circles are gorgeous, but so complex, and Darlene's artistry is miles away from my skillz. I thought I would go for something much simpler. I dyed each veil in a bucket -- one a warm yellow color, one a medium blue shade. Then I set up a third bucket with a 2x strong fuchsia solution and simply dropped the lower 2/3 of the veils into it. After a while I pulled more of the veils out of the bucket and added more dye to make a 4x strong solution.

The veils don't show smooth absolutely perfect ombres -- you have to do more work to get those -- but they are a lovely example of basic color theory. The yellow veil looks exactly like a Tequila Sunrise cocktail, deepening into a pinkish orange edge. The blue veil reminds me of a morning glory with the deep velvety purple edge and blue inner area. Photos coming soon!

13 veils. Whew.

dye down the drain

noreply@blogger.com (Vashti) — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 20:58:00 +0000

I mainly dye silk with Procion MX dyes and vinegar in low water immersion methods. I've developed my method over a couple of years now, and I continue to tweak it. Currently I'm trying to optimize my volume of dye solution and volume of powdered dye.

Dyeing sheer silk veils means that usual recommendations about how much dye and dye solution you need really do not apply. Most Procion MX dyes I work with have recommendations for when they are used with soda ash, not vinegar, for example, and per pound of fabric. When you convert from a pound of fabric down to the 10 grams of a silk veil, you get into silly-land. So over time I've calculated as small an amount of dye as seem reasonable to measure.

The thing is, my LWI dye baths do not exhaust well at all. There's still a lot of unused dye in them. Which means that rinsing takes forever. But I don't want to reduce my dye too much, because I want strong colors. So I'm continuing to fool around with amounts, but in the meantime I've had several veils that underwent 15 minutes of hand rinsing in the sink PLUS two full machine washes... and still they had excess dye. SO time consuming. SO wasteful of water. Argh.

I've completed six veils towards my goal of 18 by the end of April... that's not so bad... but my schedule is becoming quite hellish. Tonight is bellydance class; tomorrow I have a hair appointment; Wednesday I hope to dance with the local SCA ladies; Thursday night a ballroom dance lesson with my husband. Saturday may be very, very dye-stained.

A big gig looms

noreply@blogger.com (Vashti) — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 17:28:00 +0000

I was asked to vend veils at a workshop coming up in LaCrosse, WI, at the end of April. (Sonya of Chicago is teaching.) Since I'm not able to vend at the local show on April 8, I decided to accept. Now it's a matter of getting enough veils dyed to take along! I've been far too busy with my day job to dye much recently. Now my calendar is spotted with little appointments: dye 2 veils here, dye 2 veils there. I've got six weeks... I need to average at least three a week to have a respectable table. Can it be done? I guess I'll find out -- within that same time frame I've got dance class, ballroom dance lessons, and more interminable overtime at work. Eeek!

People are wacky

noreply@blogger.com (Vashti) — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 17:48:00 +0000

Before I tried dyeing anything, I read one set of instructions about doing it. Just one. That was actually good. Had I known how many different ways there are to apply dye, I might never had done it.

The people who I think are wacky are the people who don't even read ONE set of instructions, one book, one web page, one anything. They are the people who have questions in this format:

"I took an [X] and put it in a pot with some [Y]. It didn't work right. Why is that?"

Paula Burch gets these questions all the time. She is the most patient teacher in the universe. She explains carefully what they should have done. My response would look more like this:

Dear random idiot,

Why exactly did you think putting X in a pot with Y would work? Did you choose these things at random? Why do you seem surprised that you ended up with a mess? Did you even consider using a web search to get a tiny amount of information on what you planned to do? Not internet-savvy -- okay, how about the LIBRARY? Libraries are your friends. No library near you? How about a local art teacher or fabric store owner -- did you ask ANYBODY? No? Well, you go ask them now. Then come back. Tell me what they said. Maybe I'll have cooled off by then.

It doesn't bother me so much when the question is "I'd sure like to dye my [Z]. How would I do that?" Then at least we're not starting off with a ruined project. Then we can warn the unsuspecting. Then we can at least help. Afterwards... well, we are lucky there are Paula Burches in the world... diplomatic and patient dye mentors. Heavens.

Most recent question I was actually able to help somebody with:
"I'd like to dye my bedspread solid black."
What size?
"It's a queen."
Do you own any container at all that would hold a queen bedspread and enough water for it to swim freely in it?
"No."
Do you own your own washing machine?
"No. Er... this is a problem, isn't it?"
What's the bedspread made out of?
"Something shiny. It's thick and quilted."
Oh yes... this is a problem.
"Maybe I'll just buy a new one."