As long as I’m doing these fire veils, I decided to do a couple of experiments. I took the failed raspberry half-circle (came out blotchy) and I’ve wrapped it on a pole. Now, the rule of thumb for black is that black procion MX dyes will not give a black-black on silk. Normally when I dye black I use an acid dye, usually Jacquard’s, in a pot on the stove.
But I had to wonder, if I was putting black over another color, would it be black enough? So I mixed up some black procion MX with urea water, soda ash, and some SuperClear. Now, here’s something interesting… did you know SuperClear could get moldy? I didn’t. It does. Don’t think I’ve had the thickener out since I was dyeing cotton last summer. Maybe it should be stored in the fridge. Anyway, I thickened the black and soaked the wet raspberry silk. Tomorrow I’ll be able to report just how black it looks.
I also did something I’ve been wanting to do for a while. I don’t have room to paint silk veils. I literally can’t spread out three yards of anything anywhere in the house. So some designs that other dyers find very simple, I find very hard. It occurred to me one day that I had never tried the simplest possible option… scrunching a veil only until it fit the largest container I have and doing direct dye application. Sooo… I’ve got a veil in now, having applied some gray, blue, and blue-green dyes, just out of curiosity. We’ll see how it turns out.
A Good Day to Dye 