Color from the closet- Day One

 

modern light linen

For me, dye days rely so much on the weather. 

I need early morning light to gather materials and decide what colors I want to work with. Then the day needs to cook up hot and bright - I have a great market umbrella for shade this year.  

As I'm working this year, I'm talking to myself, taking notes paying attention rather than running on autopilot the way I usually do. 

Telling and showing someone who's never done this before because that's how the book will be. 

There are so many random little bits that I don't even think about.

 Like, let the cloth have a good soak in the magic sauce before dyeing. Mixing a big batch and throwing the cloth in is the first order of business on dye day. 

There was a tub deep in the closet filled with pieces that I didn't get to last year. Some from the Italian Bridal collection, an embroidered cotton lawn nightie. Embroided damask napkins. Vintage sheets and pillowcases. A lot of varying weights of linen, some garment weight, some service weight. I have whole bolts of 22" wide coarse weave toweling. A natural fiber too coarse for cotton. My best guess is linen.

A lot of it got color today. 

Again, I will be hand washing/rinsing this lot.

Most of these will be for sale. I'm still thinking about the format. 

Stuffing it all into a plastic bag isn't working for me anymore.

My thought was to get a card table, 36" square.  Lay out a single layer of pieces until the table was covered. So a square yard of cloth and two skeins of dirty thread to a bundle. How to wrap it? How to ship it? 

It seems like the Christmas card method of sending threads is working out well. 

I suppose if I had to choose what color dye to fumble all over myself, this would be in the top two only because I have enough to waste.

Note to self - kitchen gloves are too clumsy for  dye mixing