And here it is:
Here are some closer views of the sections:
Thoughts:
- I need either more striation or less. Currently there’s striation in some places but not in others, which makes it look like a mistake or an uneven dye job. I haven’t decided which I prefer; it will depend in part on what happens with my dye experiments.
- I need to add more gold and yellow-orange. I thought I had lots, but it pollutes very easily with other colors.
- I should probably ditch the dark purple (just before brown) and replace it with a warm rust brown. Will meditate on that tonight.
- It looks a little washed out, but that’s because of the effect of the white silk. Once dyed, it should look far more intense.
Tomorrow morning I will cross-dye the sample, painting it with various color schemes, and see what happens.
Ann asked how I could cross-dye the fabric when silk and wool are both protein fibers. The answer is that silk is the only natural fibers that “goes both ways”: you can dye it with fiber-reactive dyes and soda ash (a la cellulose fibers) AND you can dye it using acid dyes, in the normal protein-fiber manner. So I am taking advantage of this to dye the silk using the cellulose method, which won’t dye the wool.
Off to dinner! Tomorrow morning I will wet-finish the sample and begin playing with dyes. I never did get a chance to do a small sample with fiber-reactive dyes, so I’m just going to gamble that the method I used earlier, with tencel/alpaca, will work with without harming the wool.
