you pull a fresh new piece of hand dyed fabric from the dryer and…
those nasty specs of undissolved dye on your fabric –UGH! I hate it when that happens! I’ve dyed a lot of fabric over the years and I’ve never managed to come up with a solution to get rid of those nasty specs. I’m so careful when I mix my dyes,making sure that it’s all dissolved and mixed really well but I still get those icky specks. Earlier this week as I was setting up to dye some fabric for a new project I had a light bulb moment…
I decided to try pouring the mixed dye through a coffee filter before adding it to the fabric. It’s a bit messy and it slows the whole dyeing process down a bit but you know what?
I dyed 15 yards of fabric yesterday:
and not an icky speck on one of them!
That’s a good tip,I try to remember next time I do some dyeing.
It’s funny –I always looks forward to those spots showing up in mine! lol I do find it only seems to happen when the dye has any magenta in it. The magenta colors must be more likely to “cake”or something.
As for me,I will continue hoarding the pieces that come out with those flecks!
I’ll have to try this. Those little specks are annoying!
Yep,that has happened to me and on kits intended for sale! I always run the dye through a coffee filter. It is easy and inexpensive. You’re creative enough to dry out those filters and make something interesting with them,too.
If you pass your dye solution through a double layer of an old stocking or tights you lose the speck and not much colour intensity.
I have the most problems with Grape and Fuchsia dyes. On the advice of Deb Levy I started mixing those with a higher concentrate of urea water (4 tablespoons/1 cup water) and that eliminated the spots. I tried filtering through coffee filters but it didn’t work out for me,I lost a lot of dye intensity. But maybe I was using the wrong type of filters. I’ll have to try again!
Great advice Sue! It’s worth those extra few minutes and it looks like it worked like a charm.
Yummy colors and no spot. That’s a good idea.