Colouring fabric

I've gone for the fibre reactive Procion dye route as my selection of disperse dyes is limited to say the least. I won't bore you with process details (all that's in my technical notes / diary) but suffice to say the fabrics and fibres for each dyelot were dyed in buckets containing about 500ml liquid over 2-3 hours.

I dyed a range of cottons (homespun, muslin, voile, gauze, brushed cotton) and a piece of canvas and Saa bark along with perle 5 and 8 cotton threads and cotton knitting fibre.

Here are the yellow and greens, with the original papers in the centre (excuse the dirty patio stones in the background). The dark threads on the ochre pile were from a previous dyeing.

5.5

And here are the pinks and browns. The initial light coral samples (8 o'clock in the photo) I felt were too strong so I dyed a new lot which look more subtle (6 o'clock in photo)

5.6

Within each batch there is the expected shade variation with different fabrics but I was most surprised with the differences between the resulting colours of a cotton cheesecloth and a silk chiffon (lower fabric in each photo 5.7 and 5.8) dyed in the same bath.
The two greens on the right of the 5.7 had various dye powders in the mix including green, olive and black and each fabric type obviously takes then up to different extents.

5.7

5.8

I kept the spent dye liquids for use in preparing decorated papers in later designing in Module 1.