A few posts ago I mentioned that I was trying to find a green that was the color "of a tulip leaf." My conversation with my customer went on for several days, until I found some "Granny Apple" dye that matched the greens in the bride's shower invitation perfectly. Here is a photo:
I made one wrap and sent it off for their approval. The bride loved it and said it was great! So now I have the approval to go ahead and make wraps for all the bridesmaids and pocket squares for the men.
Here are photos of the finished product. I love it!
Now here is the astonishing part. As I have mentioned, I have experienced "splotches" or variegations when using greens in the past. I have googled everything I can think of to find someone who can explain why it happens and what to do to avoid it (if anything). So today I found an article written by someone at Dharma Trading Co. that basically said that there are too many variables for anyone to say for sure why someone gets the result they get. Amount of dye, amount of water, temperature of water, kind of silk, whether or not it's pre-washed, and on and on. But one particular paragraph caught my eye. Since I had been trying to match a color exactly for my customer, I thought it's a good thing for her that I didn't see this sooner!
"Also, when kids are tie dyeing, they are delighted no matter how the shirts look. We adults are much more critical and hard on ourselves, or we just have a vision in our head of what we think it should look like. For those trying to match the color of something else exactly, you can get lucky, or it can take days of testing and tweaking, even if you are an experienced dyer. (Folks who do color matching charge about $80 per hour! Sometimes even they can talk a couple of days to get a particular match.) "
Today I sold the Peach and Teal ribbon. I also made some bright green ribbon that I will post later. I like doing the ribbon and I intend to get some more that is 1 inch wide. Watch for those listings. The Peach ribbon is going off to Wisconsin to brighten someone's day!
Here are the newest lengths of ribbon I dyed. There are lavender and blue, lavender and pink, and a marbled purple. They are all pretty, pretty, pretty.
Also, I am really enjoying my flower garden this year. I have found that more water, more feeding, and more mulch really make a difference. I hate thinking about the triple digit weather that takes such a toll on plants here in Arizona.
Wow! Sold the pink and blue ribbon already - it's going off to Washington state. Gotta make some more, I guess.
I saw an idea on a blog that I decided to try. I ordered some 1/2" silk ribbon and am dying pieces to use for gift wrap. This is a money-saving idea because you can use either white or brown craft paper as the gift wrap, and the beautiful silk ribbon for decoration. You can use your favorite colors, or use the recipient's favorite colors. For example, today I am making ribbon in the colors of ASU, maroon and gold. My friend is a huge ASU fan and will use it to wrap all her Christmas gifts. Here are some examples of the ribbon once it's dyed.
I have a customer who wants six chiffon wraps for the bridesmaids for a wedding in the summer. She originally asked for wraps "the color of a tulip leaf." So I promptly went out and bought some tulips and tried to match the color. I tried all the green dye I have:
Emerald Green
Forest Green
Sage Green
Dark Green
Bright Green
Kelly Green
and
Lime Squeeze
None of them was quite right. I tried several shades with different dye bath times. 10 minutes instead of 20 for Forest Green. 5 minutes for Bright Green. Nothing was exactly right, but I sent six samples to my customer for consideration. She decided to mail me an invitation to the Bridal Shower with its matching envelope for me to use in trying to find the right shade.
At about the same time, I received a flyer from my dye supplier advertising some new Pantone shades for spring. I compared the Granny Apple green to the invitation and I think it's right on! I emailed a scan of the flyer and the invitation to my customer and am awaiting her reply. I think this is the one.
In the previous post I talked about using calsolene oil. Now here is another curious thing. I have made several pieces using Terra Cotta dye and they have always turned out fine. I recently dyed some gauze with the Terra Cotta using one and a half teaspoons of calsolene oil. Here is a photograph of how it turned out. Not Terra Cotta by any means.
Now here's a photograph of one I made this week without any additives at all - no calsolene.
Is there a chemist out there who can tell me what properties calsolene oil has and why it seemed to eliminate the orange component of Terra Cotta? The first one is a nice enough color, but it can't be advertised as Terra Cotta nor can it be sold to a customer who requests that color.
The more I work with silk and dye the more fascinated I become with the chemistry.
