dye study group | Tien Chiu's Blog

September 15, 2010 by Tien Chiu

Done with dye study group!

Nothing was ever so sweet as this:

success at duplicating color — successful duplication of color!

It took me three dyebaths and something like 24 skeins to get it right, but I have successfully reproduced the color!!

This finishes out my Lanaset dye work for the dye study group, and because the group is finishing up in early October, I don’t think I’m going to start work on the Cibacron F. To be honest, after dyeing over 180 skeins in 15 batches in just over 2 months, I’m feeling a little burned out on dyeing. And I can do the exercises with Cibacron F any time (preferably next summer, when dawn comes earlier and I can squeeze in a dyebath before going to work).

Karren asked us to take and post photos of our setup, and I thought some of you might be interested in it as well, so here are a few photos showing my equipment and setup:

(This is just in case some of you think I might be a neat person!)

And here is a shot of all the measuring equipment I needed for the dye study group:

dye measuring tools — clockwise from lower left: gloves, calibratable pH meter, volumetric flasks, 4 different sizes of syringes, 2-kg, 0.1g readability scale with 1 kg calibration weight, 200g, 0.01g readability scale with 100g calibration weight

(And that doesn’t even include the weighing boats or wash bottles!)

Here is a photo of my dye sample setup, an electric frying pan filled with 1-pint, wide-mouthed canning jars, with the glass stir rod I use to stir my samples:

It’s plugged into this electric temperature controller:

And here are the Tyvek wristbands I use for holding the skeins:

Tyvek event wristbands used for marking skeins

And last, but not least, a few of the dyed skeins themselves!

I am now done with the dye study group. I have learned a HUGE amount from the study group, and while I still wouldn’t call myself a master dyer, I now know a lot more about reproducible color, dye chemistry, and color mixing. Not many people can precisely match a color, so I am quite proud of myself! and very, very grateful to Karren for putting this together. I don’t know of anywhere else I could have learned this, so I’m truly indebted to her generosity in teaching us.

And now, off to bed! Tomorrow it’s time to pack up the dye studio, and then launch into…DRAWING!

September 13, 2010 by Tien Chiu

More color matching attempts

I only squeezed in one dyebath this weekend, but it was instructive. I managed to match one more color from the color wheel (only two left to go), and got one more near-match for the beige:

On the right is the first attempt; on the left is the second attempt, the color I’m trying to match is in the center.

Karren told us that value (lightness/darkness of the color) is the first thing we should try to match. So I tried a couple different DOS (depth of shade – the ratio of dye to fiber), and came up with one (the left-hand sample) that matched pretty well at 0.6% DOS.

The next thing to match is hue – the basic color. One of mine is too yellow, the other too red. Somewhere in the middle is the right hue. Since the too-yellow sample has a ratio of about 5:1 yellow: red and the closest too-red sample has a ratio of about 2.3:1, for my next batch of skeins I’m going to try a sampling of all the ratios in between.

Finally, once you have the hue down, you match the chroma (relative brightness or “pure-ness” of the color). Of the samples I’ve wound onto cards, 17-25% Royal Blue added to the yellow-red mix seems to produce the right chroma, about 3 on the Munsell scale. So I am using percentages of Royal Blue in that range.

Here are the next ten skeins I plan to dye:

DOS	Mustard	Royal Blue	Deep Red	Ratio of Mustard to Deep Red
Sample
0.6%	62%	25%	13%	4.7692
0.6%	60%	25%	15%	4
0.6%	57%	25%	18%	3.1667
0.6%	55%	25%	20%	2.75
0.7%	60%	25%	15%	4
0.7%	57%	25%	18%	3.17
0.7%	55%	25%	20%	2.75
0.6%	65%	20%	15%	4.3333
0.6%	63%	20%	17%	3.7059
0.6%	60%	20%	20%	3
0.7%	65%	20%	15%	4.3333
0.7%	62%	20%	18%	3.4444
0.7%	60%	20%	20%	3

The three variables I’m playing with are depth of shade, ratio of gold to red, and the percentage of blue. (The blue is in there to dull the color, being the complement of gold + red=orange.)

I’ve decided to switch over to percentage of total dye for my notation, as I’m finding it easier to think through when working with three colors.

It’s going to take me probably another 2-3 iterations to duplicate this color, but I can sense I’m getting closer!

September 5, 2010 by Tien Chiu

…and a touch of glitz

I liked the peacock feather from yesterday, but it seemed a little drab. After all, peacocks are brilliantly colored, are they not? So I got out one of the pirns of fine gold thread left over from the wedding-coat fabric, and wove two more feathers. And here, in full, is the evolution of the peacock feather design:

The evolution of the handwoven peacock feather design

You can see that it starts out blobby (a little like a Dr. Seuss green space alien, if Dr. Seuss had created anything like that), then the feathery bits appear, and by the time you get to the fourth one down the basic design is in place. After that I changed out some of the colors (when my embroidery thread arrived), and finally the last two have glitter.

Here is a photo of the 4 most recent iterations:

Final four handwoven peacock-feather samples, showing the evolution in wefts

I went back and forth for awhile on whether I thought the glitz was pretty or just gaudy, but after seeing it in many different types of lighting, I like the glitz a lot. And the thread, being very fine, only stiffens the “hand” a little bit, still well within the parameters for a shawl.

Oh, and here’s the back side:

wrong side of handwoven taquete peacock feathers

Lillian was right: it will need to be lined.

I have now gotten the Cibacron F “pure” color samples back from Ginny, which means I can now get started on dyeing the Cibacron F color wheel. However, I am still working on the Lanaset color wheel and the Lanaset color reproduction, not to mention making 10 fruitcakes this weekend, so I am not quite sure what I will tackle next. Cibacron F may have to wait for during the week, though I’d hate to defer it. Dawn is coming later and later, making it harder and harder to get a complete dyebath in before work. And Cibacron F takes half an hour longer than Lanaset! so I may try to get some Cibacron F in this weekend, and save the Lanaset for working during the week. I know from experience that I can get a Lanaset dyebath done in the mornings.

Anyway, I have selected the color I want to try matching. It is Colourmart 60/2 silk, color “camel”, 2.5Y 7/3 in the Munsell system, and looks kinda like this (usual caveats about monitor colors, etc. being “off”):

color to duplicate for Munsell dye study group

I have dyed the first four test samples and will be looking at them later today or early tomorrow.

September 2, 2010 by Tien Chiu

Color wheel, attempt 3

I finished the next set of attempts for the color wheel. Here are the photos and my notes (note that the photo is very untrue to color, for reasons noted below – it’s more to give a general idea of what’s going on than an actual sense for the matches):

3rd attempt at dyeing a color wheel using Lanaset dyes

I am still finding it difficult to assess near-matches because of the glossiness of the silk and the way the hue-value-chroma changes (often radically) depending on the angle of the light. I am trying to do the matching at approximately the same time of day (7:30am or so) in the same place, viewing a flat horizontal surface from above. But it is still difficult. I look at the photo above – green does not look like a match at all because the light is coming from a slightly oblique angle, but viewed from straight above it matches perfectly. And so on.

I also decided to remove the color chips and place them on the card. The edge of the card has shadows that make assessing the match more difficult.

Here are my notes from the comparison (click to get the larger image so you can actually read it!)

The last assignment is to pick a color, any color, and try to reproduce it. I will pick a (relatively) neutral color since that is more challenging, and I want to do the hard stuff within the context of the study group while I can still get the thoughts of Karren and the other study group members. (And, you learn more by diving into the hard stuff first!)

Regarding my taquete puzzle, I did what I should have done at the beginning and called Sharon, my sewing mentor, to ask her about lining a shawl. It turns out it’s quite do-able – all you have to do is do an invisible, loosely-sewn tack about once every 10-12″ within the shawl, to keep the layers together. So it’s full steam ahead! I have purchased several thousand yards of rayon embroidery thread to do the weaving, and it won’t be here for several days, so I’m going to use the interim time to (a) further refine the peacock feather pattern, and (b) maybe weave up some butterflies. For some reason, I really like the idea of weaving butterflies!

August 30, 2010 by Tien Chiu

Color wheel, attempt #2

Peg asked whether it was difficult to determine the match when dealing with a glossy yarn “chip”. It is extremely difficult, because the hue and value change markedly depending on the angle of the yarn to the light and to the viewer. I finally settled on using diffuse daylight with the book flat in front of me; it was the only way to keep my sanity. According to Karren, industry uses light boxes for this purpose. I may try this; I have a makeshift “light box” for photography anyway, so could bring it out for use in color matching.

At any rate, here is my “color wheel”, minus the RP card, which I didn’t have time to wind. I am still tweaking the colors on most of these:

The red is a little too blue, the orange definitely too yellow. Yellow has too high chroma and needs to be toned down, probably by adding black. Yellow-green is problematic: it is ALMOST a match, the hue (color) and value (lightness/darkness) are correct but it has slightly too low chroma (saturation). This is difficult to fix, but I think I might be able to manage it.

Green is too yellow – more turquoise is needed. Blue-green and “blue” (what you are probably seeing as turquoise) are spot on. The royal blue chip is almost correct, but the chroma is too high (the color is too “bright”); next time I’ll add some black to tone it down. The violet is way off; it needs more red, but I don’t think I can get it correct with the dyes I used, so I’m going to try a different combination of dyes.

It is amazing how subtle the color differences can be, and how challenging they are to “fix”! I have been keeping notes on each batch, with comments about the direction in which I’m trying to nudge the colors. I think it will take me at least another 2-3 batches of skeins before I get things right.

After that, of course, it’s on to the Cibacron F color wheel…

Next (and final) exercise after that is picking a specific color to reproduce. I will probably pick a neutral color (beiges and browns), as Karren says they are the hardest to reproduce. I figure I might as well try the most challenging color possible during the study group – that way I can get help on it if I need it, which won’t be the case afterwards.

I am very pleased with what I am learning in this study group, it’s taught me huge amounts about dyes and dyeing. If Karren ever offers this class commercially, it will be well worth taking.