SCARF - Hand Painting the warp

Greetings.  In the past I have hand dyed yarn and fiber.  I have never hand dyed really long pieces of yarn as most skeins are made up to be about 2 yards folded in half so about 18".  My warps are 3 yds long or 9 feet.  I realized I did not have enough table to dye these in a straight line.  I got creative.

Soaked the warp bundles in the soda ash solution for about 25 minutes.  15 is usually enough, but I had to mix up the dye and it took about 20 minutes.  I picked 5 shades of my colors and then wanted to "splash" some of the violet red in areas.  I did not.  I mixed the violet red dye but did not use it since the colors seem oh so saturated.  This will be a bright scarf if nothing else!

Mixed the dyes.  In most cases used a bit less dye than I should of hoping for "moderate tones".  After all is said and done there are 5 tones but it looks like three colors.

Dyes all mixed ready to go

Zig zag method to save space

Applying the Terracotta color last

All wrapped up to process for 18 hours

Scarf - Holy LOUD Orange

While I wait for my next colors to arrive I thought I would move the project along.  Looking at my color swatch from the last post.  I decided to use the SOFT ORANGE for my weft.  The sample looks nice, a little understated and I planned to use less dye than I should to dye the weft for a slightly lighter color.

Let's just say that dye strikes amazing well on tencel.  I may be buying more of this yarn I Love the feel of it and the drape of the yarn.  So excited to get this woven so I can see how it turns out!

I had previously measured out 400 yds. of the bamboo weft and tied it in a nice easy skein for dying.

400 Yds. 16/2 Bamboo rayon

I prepared my soda ash solution.  This was a bit of a chance.  Regular rayon does not play well with soda ash.  It weakens the fibers and can tear when wet.  I did not see bamboo mentioned in the list so figured we were good to go.  I soaked the skein in the solution for 18 minutes and then wrung it out pretty good.

In the meantime I prepared 1 cup of dye.  The concentration calls for 2.5 tsp of dye but figured I wanted a lighter tone to the color.  I used 1.5 tsp of dye powder.  I pasted it up with the urea solution (water and urea) and then mixed the dye.

I soaked it for 8 hours in the dye bath.  I then drained the dye.  Rinsed it until the water ran mostly clear and then hung it to dry completely.  Next day I hand washed it in the sink with a bit of industrial detergent and a bit of Downy softner.  I hung it to dry again.

Bobbin winder in the cordless drill!

I used the umbrella swift to hold the skein and my ball winder to turn the skein into a center pull ball.  Using that and the winder attached to the drill allowed me to wind almost 4 full bobbins to weave with.  I think it too much weft.  However, I think I will need more than my project planner says because i think this is going to pack a bit tighter than the original yarn specified for this project (see the yarn debacle here).  I want to be prepared!

As you can see in the photos the color is much more intense than I suspected!  Its a gorgeous color and I love it but it might be competitive in my scarf.  I am going to have to include either the ORANGE CRUSH or the DEEP ORANGE as one of my colors to balance this baby out!

Soft Orange is a bit LOUDER than I thought

Next up:  It's all about the warp bout the warp bout the warp...