Chain-dyeing

Instead of cutting mini skeins to dye, when I knew I’d be using at least some of it for weft, I decided to try to dye the unbroken yarn. I wound up small loops, tied, wound another etc. until the whole ball of yarn was used up, and then painted them side by side. I then use steaming so the colours don’t run too much, but having soaked the yarn in vinegar water first and also having vinegar in the dye solutions makes this superwash yarn absorb and hold most of the dye anyway.

The process from soak to dye layout to steaming and then tossed into the hot water to cool after steaming (with more vinegar to prevent bleeding) did cause some tangling obviously, that’s the nature of yarn, but it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. And now we’re ready to weave again.

12 thoughts on “Chain-dyeing

    1. I use Ashford acid dyes, those are the ones most available here. I mix the powders to a 1% solution in all the colours, then mix in the smaller jars.

    1. They almost have a pulse, don’t they? I’ve already decided I’ll do more for a weaving where they’ll be more visible, they unfortunately lose a lot in the blanket because the warp (the vertical threads) are set a bit too close and dominate the horisontal lines/colours..

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