A year or two ago, I bought some silk fabric, undyed silk scarves, and a few colors of Procion MX powdered dye from Dharma Trading, then seemingly forgot about them and never did the actual dyeing. (I've done a fair amount of dyeing wool yarn with food dyes used as acid dyes, but this is my first time dyeing silk) Dharma Trading has since started carrying silk veils with finished edges, which is good, since my 3-yard pieces of fabric have cut edges and raw selvedges, I'll have to finally learn to use the rolled hem foot for my sewing machine.
I went looking for a tutorial on the net, and didn't come up with one that I felt really met my needs, so I had to improvise. These are the the two I used as jumping off points:
- Tie-Dyeing Silk in a Microwave - good basic intro, but no pictures! (and I like pictures)
- How to Do Low Water Immersion Dyeing - great intro to the technique, but based on fiber-reactive dyes, not acid dyes.
I decided to try my hand at the low-water immersion style, but doing it with Procion MX dyes and vinegar in the microwave, and I have to say, although I could refine my technique a lot more, I am happy with the results.
My materials:
In the picture are: Procion MX powdered dyes (Fire Red, Saphire Blue, Charcoal Gray, and Better Black), ultra-cheap measuring spoons from the dollar store, rubber gloves, and 8oz hair color squirt bottles with angled spouts from the beauty supply store. Not shown in the picture was the dust mask that was dangling from my neck at the time.
A note about safety with dyes: most of these dyes were originally derived from coal tar, they are carcinogenic and generally bad for you. They are at their most dangerous in their powered form, since you can accidentally inhale the powder, hence the dust mask. You don't want to ingest them either, so you can't use any of your regular food containers or utensils, hence the el-cheap-o dollar store measuring spoons. Seriously, they are bad for you. Don't be stupid.
I measured out the powdered dye into the hair color bottles out on my porch so as not to have powdered dye in my kitchen. I did it sitting next to the wall where I was protected from the breeze. I used newspaper to cover the deck, and kept a damp paper towel on hand to wet down any powder that got loose. I used two teaspoons of dyes with no asterisk after the name on the jar, four teaspoons for dyes that did have an asterisk after their name. Then filled the bottles with plain room-temperature water. The bottles hold 8oz each, but are graduated on the side, so you can easily mix up only 2 or 4oz instead.
If you're going to use more than a couple of colors, small batches are essential. I think I only ended up using about 2-3oz total of dye solution per veil!
I know the books and things tell you to mix up a paste with the dye and dilute it out and all sorts of complicated things... but since I'm not doing this professionally, and it didn't have to be perfect, I just screwed on the bottle lid, covered the spout with my gloved finger, and shook vigorously until it appeared all the powder was dissolved. Much easier.
Preparing the silk:
Here are a couple of silk scarves soaking in tap water with a couple of generous glugs of vinegar. Note, the vinegar smell gets really overwhelming after a few hours, next time I'm going to get citric acid from the canning section of the grocery, it doesn't smell. I let the silk items soak for at least 20 min, to make sure they were really good and wet.
Notice that I'm using a mixing bowl? You can do the vinegar soak in a regular bowl or pot that you use for food, but the actual dyes can't touch your cooking implements.
My improvised work space:
To protect my kitchen counters, I cut open a plastic shopping bag. as you can see, this process doesn't require a large workspace.
The actual dyeing:
Take your silk item, let a lot of water drip out, and either gather it somehow, or not, then stuff it into the bottom of a ziplock bag. I used a quart size for scarves, and a gallon size for veils, there should be room in the bag for steam to build up later in the process. I gathered my veils sloppily along the long edges, so that I got a 45 in wide bundle that I then shoe-horned into the ziplock, which got me vaguely horizontal bands across my veils, but a more haphazard approach would get you a more organic-looking result.
Now it's time to dye! Squirt the dye onto the silk. It's trial-and-error to figure out how much to use. But basically use enough to get into the fabric, but not so much that a lot pools up in the bottom of the bag. Don't be afraid to leave a little bit of undyed white sections in your fabric.
Just a note about using black: The black I used seriously overpowered any other color that was in there with it, so use it sparingly. The charcoal gray played much more nicely with the other colors - it looked nicely on it's own, and darkened without obscuring the blue or red where they overlapped.
Steaming in the microwave:
Pour a tablespoon or two of plain water into the ziplock (to produce the steam), then seal the bag shut.
If you have a spare microwave, it would be better to use it, but as long as you don't let the bag explode, your regular microwave should be fine. Consider using one of those plastic things from Target that made for covering food so it doesn't splatter all over the microwave if you are concerned.
I set the microwave on 70% power and steamed the veils 5 times at 40 seconds each time, and the scarves 5 times at 30 seconds each time. I let them rest for a minute or two in between. Microwaves vary, of course, so watch your items and stop the microwave if the bag looks like it might pop.
Rinsing:
I chose to rinse these out in my kitchen sink, since I don't put food that's going to be eaten in the sink, and since these dyes supposedly do not stick to stainless steel. However, if you have a laundry sink or a garden sink, do your rinsing there.
Red dyes take a long time to rinse out. It's apparently a fact of life. The excess blue would be washed out in about 2 rinses, but the red would still be running after 5 or more. Don't worry, though, the dye wasn't washing out of the fabric, it stayed a vibrant red, it's just hard to get the excess dye out.
Hanging out to dry:
I hung my veils and scarves out on my back porch, just over the railing, but you can hang them out your windows or wherever is convenient. Even hanging them up in your shower should be fine. They dry very quickly. Though they did have a kind-of "crunchy" texture when they were dry. Supposedly rinsing them in vinegar or regular fabric softener should fix that, but I haven't tried it yet.
The results:
A couple of skinny scarves.
A pretty obnoxious combo of red and blue with a little gray.
Red with charcoal gray.
Finally, my very favorite, blue with charcoal gray. It looks like it's made of stone, it's spectacular.
Total cost:
Not counting things I already had around the house, here's how much the three above veils would have cost me at current prices (and substituting pre-made veils for cut yardage)
- 3 105x45 white veils: $10 each = $30
- 2oz Procion MX dye Sapphire Blue = $6.95 (but had more than 2/3 of jar left over)
- 2oz Procion MX dye Fire Red = $3.95 (but had more than 2/3 of jar left over)
- 2oz Procion MX dye Charcoal Gray = $3.95 (but had more than 3/4 of jar left over)
- 3 angled-neck hair-dye bottles: $1.65 each = $4.95 (reusable)
- 1 set of cheap measuring spoons: $1 (reusable)
Total: $50.80, 0r $16.93 each. Even better, the marginal cost per veil goes down as you build up a collection of things like dyes and squirt bottles. Next time, I would only need to order the veils and maybe a couple more colors to play with, since I still have a lot of the red, blue and gray left over.
Of course, these don't come close to the artistry of professional veil dyers, which is why they can charge retail prices for their veils (and why I will continue to pay retail prices for their veils!) but dyeing at home is *fun*, and I am very proud of what I have created. I think anyone who is at all curious should take a Saturday morning and give home-dyeing a shot.
Big thanks to Vashti for her help clarifying my title and dye nomenclature.
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