So the great question yesterday was what to use with Periwinkle on my 5mm habotai. It’s kind of a weird color, because not only is it blue and purple, but it is also grayed out. If you put something too warm with it, the color sort of washes out. I was very tempted by a raspberry or a baby pink, but I just felt like the periwinkle would be overwhelmed. On the other hand, too much blue and you just get a lot of blue, no periwinkle. The blue dyes often tend to just “win.”
(A note for those unfamiliar with this dye method, which is low water immersion. You’re putting colors together with fabric in a barely adequate dye bath with no agitation. The results of these LWI baths is often nigh unrepeatable, but as you work with certain dyes you do see trends. One is that the blue dyes of medium or greater intensity do tend to strike fast, so they “win” the race to bond to the fabric. Unless I greatly reduce the volume of blue dye in a mix, what comes out will almost always be primarily blue. There’s nothing the matter with that, most of the time.)
I decided to push the periwinkle in two opposite directions. I put it in one bath with Plum Blossom, a pale lavender dye, and another with Steel Grey. The first veil is indeed very pinky and purply and makes me think of Easter candy! But the second has far too much white in it. Both the gray and the periwinkle exhausted before all the fabric could pick up color (for a change, there was almost nothing to rinse out of the silk). So I’m running that veil through a straight periwinkle bath as well, just to see if it can pick up a little something something.
A Good Day to Dye 