Ahhhh. Summertime in Texas. We've just endured a weekend where the temperatures were at record highs: 112° F on Saturday and 111° on Friday. It was brutal.
Luckily, it is supposed to cool down this week. An exciting prospect. So the first thing I did this morning was check the weather. And I was so relieved when my Weather Kitty app told me it was going to be "much cooler than yesterday." The high is only supposed to be 106°. Hmmmmm. I suspect we are going to beat that. Just after noon, we were already at 105°.
The rest of the week looks, well, nasty.
What do you do when it is dangerously hot? Well, I thought I'd take advantage of the heat and dye some fabric!
I love to dye fabric. Sometimes I do full immersion dyeing, putting the dye and fabric in huge buckets and swishing it often with my gloved hands. The resulting fabric is very solid.
But lately, I've been doing low water immersion dyeing in 1.5 liter bowls with lids. It is much quicker and involved a lot less swishing. Here are two yards from my dyeing session this morning in progress. Each bowl contains a yard of Pimatex. The first bowl has a high dye concentration, the second a low concentration. I hope to get two different values of the same color.
And, the Texas sun is actually good for something! I put the covered containers in the sun and let them "bake" for 24 hours. Heat aids the reaction of dye to cloth, and I get very vivid colors:
The resulting fabric is pretty solid. Some pieces are very solid, some have light mottling, which I rather like. This is some fabric I dyed a couple of weeks ago:
So what colors do you dye when it is 105°? Hot colors, of course! How about some Chili Fuego?
And to cool down, I ended my dyeing session with Lime Pop.
I can't wait until washout tomorrow! C'mon, Texas sun, do your worst!
Luckily, it is supposed to cool down this week. An exciting prospect. So the first thing I did this morning was check the weather. And I was so relieved when my Weather Kitty app told me it was going to be "much cooler than yesterday." The high is only supposed to be 106°. Hmmmmm. I suspect we are going to beat that. Just after noon, we were already at 105°.
What do you do when it is dangerously hot? Well, I thought I'd take advantage of the heat and dye some fabric!
I love to dye fabric. Sometimes I do full immersion dyeing, putting the dye and fabric in huge buckets and swishing it often with my gloved hands. The resulting fabric is very solid.
But lately, I've been doing low water immersion dyeing in 1.5 liter bowls with lids. It is much quicker and involved a lot less swishing. Here are two yards from my dyeing session this morning in progress. Each bowl contains a yard of Pimatex. The first bowl has a high dye concentration, the second a low concentration. I hope to get two different values of the same color.
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| This morning's dyed fabric baking in the sun |
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