Silk Scarf Dyeing with Procion MX Dyes

What a wonderful Thanksgiving with our family. My daughters were home and I thought a scarf dyeing project would be fun to introduce them to fabric dyeing. It was my first time mixing my own colors from the 3 primary colors at home. I ordered several silk scarves from Dharma.

 I had this box that I measured the dyes in. It helped to contain the dye powders so they didn't fly around my laundry room.

 For each scarf, my daughters chose 3 colors in the Sunshine color family of Carol Soderlund.

Time to mix the colors

 They soaked each scarf in warm water and arranged it on a tray. See the plastic cups with the mixed dye colors?

Each of the 3 colors was poured onto the scarf.

 We are mushing the scarf about to get the color everywhere.

This is what it looked like after we manipulated the scarf to move the dye.

This is Maggie's scarf. She is adding the fixative.

 We covered the scarves with plastic wrap to keep the air out and covered them with a towel to keep them warm.

We decided that was fun and so we did some more. I didn't have any more trays so we used these plastic bins that washed lettuce comes in to arrange the scarves and apply the dye.

 After the batching, I washed them in synthrapol in Hot water and hung them to dry.

We did 5 scarves in all.

Melanie is modeling hers.