Fabric Dyeing with Carol Soderlund

Recently I had the wonderful experience of a 5 day workshop at ProChem in Massachusetts with Carol Soderlund.  The class had beginner to very experienced fabric dyers in it and there was plenty of information for all of us to learn.

 Carol is showing us a book each of us will make with all the fabric samples we will dye in the first 2 days.  There are over 1,000 colors we will dye.

 Here she is with packets of the fabric squares we will be dyeing. The edges were pinked which was really helpful in limiting raveling.

 This is some of the dye we measured. Believe it or not, the 2 rusty orange looking dyes in the dishes near the front equaled the same amount of dye, by weight, as that reddish orange colored dye in the dish at the back of the photograph.

 Anne, a member of my dyeing group, was prepared to stir the dye with her extra long rubber gloves.

We have measured the salt, water and dye to be ready to start.

 Here is a yellow dye bath.

 This is an orange one.

Now all the colors are in the washing machine to remove the excess dye.  

 Aren't they so pretty in the dryer?

 Our homework was to press all those squares of dyed fabric. Here is Carol with more members of my group showing the beautiful results.

 We cut the fabric into strips and sorted them to exchange with fabric dyed by the other groups.

It took quite a while to cut the strips into 1" squares, which we taped into our books.  This was only the first few days of the workshop. Next we learned about color gradation, overdyeing, making complementary colors, microwave dyeing and so much more.