We had our first outdoor dyefest today. It hit 82 degrees just now. Typically for Georgia, we go straight from bone chilling wet days, head over heels into summer. I don't know how the plants and animals manage without spring. This is the batch of antique table and bed linen I have been hoarding since last summer - some of it a gift from a friend in FL who ran out of closet space and some of it booty from the estate sales and flea markets of Rhode Island. There is everything here from swatches of lawn so old and fragile I have to be careful wringing it out, to gauze, sateen, shirting, and embroidered damask.
Total fatigue is causing me to let this crop batch properly before my color greed gets the best of me. Did something a little different this time. I tossed the water damp cloth with the dyes on the tabletop like so much salad or bread dough, then stuffed the color kin in the mason jars to stew awhile in the heat. I ran out of jars in pretty short order so there's a dozen gallon plastic baggies stuffed with fat colors too. After a few hours I went back and gave each bag and jar a good drench with soda ash sauce. I go out there and turn everything from time to time like Mrs.Owl with her eggs. Now, I'm going to try to forget it all until tomorrow afternoon.
All this talk on the QA list about hand-dyed versus commercial fabric and then seeing Leslie Riley's beautiful overdyed commercial fabric spurred me to get filthy once again. I have been dragging around this navy blue & cream fish print batik for ten years or more. If you look through my completed work, those fish keep popping up. I am much happier with it now. Dyeing is out of my system for a few weeks and at this rate, I predict that by the end of summer, my entire stash of store bought will have been overdyed with something.
