In My Time of Dying Part 5 & 6

This week I spend two days this week dying the fabric for my jacket. The first day I was really excited that I was dying my fabric – excited as well as super stressed cause I really didn’t want to mess it up. Using three different dye bath I was trying to achieve a gradient that when from a light pink/brown, into a deeper orange and then into a dark red. I’d practiced these colours on samples already and knew which dye baths to use, but I must have forgotten a step because when I dried the fabric what I had was pink fabric moving into a purple gradient. To say I was gutted wouldn’t be an exaggeration. I hated the colour, and I really just didn’t want to carry on that day. I went to find Irene, who told me that I needed to sort the colour out, which was exactly what I needed to hear. With a plan of action ready for the next day, I went home, consoled myself with cookie dough and pizza, then got up bright an early ready for a second day of fabric dying.

Day 2 – trying to make my fabric orange instead of pink. I used an orange dye bath that didn’t make much of a difference, then I made a darker orange dye bath which gave me a better result but had almost gotten rid of all my gradient dying. So I then made a dark red/brown dye bath which I then dipped the fabric in for about 20 minutes to get a more noticeable gradient. However, when my fabric dries, the colours become much lighter, which kind of sucks because I really loved the colour when the fabric was wet. One consolation is that when the fabric is waxed, the colours become richer! Yay!

In the end I’m happy with how my fabric had turned out, compared to the first day when it was a really horrible pink. After ironing my fabric it looks better again and I know that the colours will deepen after waxing.

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