Failure and Success

I do forget how much I enjoy a day of dyeing! But when exploring new techniques it is important to anticipate failure and hope for success.
The weld and madder vats were refreshed by boiling the used weld tops and madder roots in separate pans to extract more colour. Then I added dye from the cold vats which I keep in rectangular storage boxes. These boxes have been a brilliant solution to larger fabric sizes and they are just large enough for the fabric to lay flat when not being stirred. I decided to put the wetted fabric into the warm pans which were heated just under simmer for about 40 mins. Then the fabric was left in the vat to cool and taken out when I was happy with the colour. Some of the weld was overnight some of the madder was 3+ hours. Some were overdyed some were first time. I was pleased with the colour.

Madder on cotton madder on wool, both with Alum mordant; indigo over weld, indigo dipped for 5mins then dipped for 2.

The indigo vat needed 5 teaspoons of soda and 3 of Hydros, but I was really pleased that I was  understanding the chemistry of the vat and could work out what was needed to re juvenate it again.
One waxed design had already been in a weak madder vat; the wax had been boiled out. I wanted to use the indigo to highlight the design. Indigo lays onto the fibre whereas madder dyes into the fibre so when I put the fabric into the indigo vat it laid on top of the madder and I ended up with a blue piece of material and no design! Another learning curve!

I had some successes

Interpreting the sea using indigo and weld. I dipped the top an extra time for 2 minutes to contrast the sea.

 

And I had some failures

De waxing is still a long process by boiling in a pan adding cold water keeping the fabric under the surface then skimming the wax off the top when cool. So I decided to try ironing out as much as possible using paper to absorb the wax then using the washing machine at 50 to wash the rest out. As you can see I hadn't fixed the dye and the washing machine has wax pearls all around the drum!!
So it's back to boiling in my 'wax only' pan and adding a little washing soda as recommended when I researched how other people de-wax!