READY TO SPECKLE ACROSS BOTH TRAYS
COTTON WOOL
Ice Dyeing Sunny Cotton Yarn
We are so excited a new cotton yarn is joining the Knomad line up! Here...
Dyeing Soleil wool & cotton blend: Acid vs fiber reactive dyes
Featuring: Knomad Soleil Fingering (50% Superwash Merino 50% Pima Cotton)
Our Goal: Conduct an experiment using fiber-reactive dye to see the difference in uptake and refraction of color for the wool content versus the cotton content.
Abstract: What happens if we use colors known to break from the fiber-reactive line and observe which colors adhere in their component parts versus which colors “blend” between the 2 fiber contents.
For those with time to read the finer details, let’s dive in!
YOU WILL NEED
-4 skeins of Knomad Soleil Fingering
-Shower Curtain Rings
-Respirator
-Double Burner Induction Cooktop
-Fiber-reactive Dye from Dharma Trading in Silver Lining, Timberwolf and New Black
-Two 2” deep stainless steel restaurant trays
-Citric Acid (fixative for dye to adhere to wool)
-Soda Ash (mordant for dye to adhere to cotton)
-Gram Scale
-ML Measuring Cup
-Synthrapol Textile Detergent
Fiber-reactive dyes work on both protein fibers (wool, alpaca, silk or any fiber derived from an animal) and cellulose fibers (cotton, flax, bamboo or any fiber derived from a plant). The same is not true of acid-reactive dyes made for protein fibers. Those will stain the cellulose fiber but rinse right out. I don’t have an understanding of the chemical properties of these dyes and why one works for both but the other doesn’t, but www.pburch.net is a phenomenal resource for all things technical on the chemistry of different dye classifications. I highly recommend Paula’s website to anyone who wants to read up on the why and how of dye chemistry, as I can only advise you on the practical aspects of hand dyeing. My last chemistry class was in the 8th grade!
TO START
In your first tray, dissolve 2 Tablespoons of soda ash in 4,000 ml of warm water. I highly recommend you laminate a hang tag to tie on the yarn that says “wool” on 2 and “cotton” on the other 2 so you can keep the skeins organized.
In your second tray, dissolve 1 Tablespoon of citric acid in 4,000 ml of warm water.
If you have Synthrapol, a textile detergent that’s milled to be Ph neutral (and thus not affect the ability of the dye to adhere to the yarn), add a teaspoon in. I’ve found cotton blends need 12 hours of soak time without Synthrapol or about 2 hours with Synthrapol. If the fiber isn’t thoroughly whetted out, the dye application will be patchy with lots of white space that rejects the water and thus the dye.
CELLULOSE FIBER SOAKING PROTEIN FIBER SOAKING
I have purposely chosen three grey dyes from Dharma Trading’s fiber-reactive line because grey is a color made up of all 3 primaries. I want to encourage these dyes to break into their component colors, so I have not mixed a liquid stock, but instead speckled them in by dropping small amounts of dye powder evenly across both trays in 3 sections. For everything you want to know about speckling yarn, click here.
HOW MUCH DYE?
I want a 1% depth of shade between all 3 colors, so the following math formula determined how much dye for each color:
400 grams of yarn x 1% d.o.s. = 4 grams of dye TOTAL
4 grams of dye / 3 colors used = 1.33 grams PER COLOR
SILVER LINING TIMBERWOLF NEW BLACK
READY TO SPECKLE ACROSS BOTH TRAYS
Starting with Silver Lining in the top third, drop small amounts of dye evenly across both trays of yarn. If you look closely, there doesn’t seem to be much color breaking with the lightest shade.
In the middle section, we will drop in the Timberwolf. If you look at the closeup, you can see tiny dots of a mustard color appearing!
On the bottom section, drop in the New Black. This one is breaking heavily, you can see tiny speckles of red, yellow and blue throughout the black! I love how the 3 colors were selected for their relative saturation points (Silver Lining being the lightest grey, Timberwolf being a mid tone grey and Black being the darkest) but they also happen to be in order of which colors break least to most! I bet it will be more dynamic in the finished project for the colors to shift back and forth from light to dark and also from solid-shade speckles to mildly variegated speckles to heavily variegated speckles.
HOW TO SET THE DYE
For the wool content in the yarn, I set it on an induction cooktop for 22 minutes at 200 degrees and let it cool to room temperature before rinsing. 100% of the dye adhered and the rinse water was crystal clear.
For my cotton content in the yarn, I let it sit for 24 hours and spent about 3 minutes rinsing in cold water before the excess unbound dye was completely rinsed out.
It is typical that most, if not all, of the dye is absorbed during the heat setting of the wool yarn. Cotton does not absorb 100% of the dye and significantly more rinsing is required to get the yarn to rinse clear. Much like the infamous red tshirt that stains all your white laundry, cellulose fibers just seem to be less receptive to the dye pigment molecule binding process than the protein fibers are.
THE RESULTS
CELLULOSE DYE PROCESS ON THE LEFT PROTEIN DYE PROCESS ON RIGHT
The results are noticeably distinct! On the cellulose process, the Silver Lining color seems to have diffused into the background and given the skein a semi solid tonal grey wheras the protein process has more intense color patches next to sharp white patches. This is likely due to the protein process having a much quicker dye “strike” (the active processing time that the dye is adhering to the yarn). 22 minutes for superwash wool vs 24 hours for the cotton. The slower process for the cotton content meant more opportunity for the dyes to drift down and mix with each other before adhering to the yarn and thus, more diffused color result and softer speckling. And a lot of the pinkish purple is pulling through on the cotton side wheras there is almost no purple on the wool side. The wool side has a prominent yellow cast!
COTTON WOOL COTTON WOOL
My favorite aspect of our experiment is seeing that I can get a unique result using the same yarn and the same dye, just changing which element I want to absorb the color!
You might be wondering if we can dye both in the same skein; and I’ve wondered that too! My practical knowledge of the Ph range necessary to keep the dye bound tells me that setting the dye for one will break the bond of the dye for the other. Wool wants an acidic bath in the 2-4 range and cotton wants an alkaline bath in the 10-11.5. The dye molecules would most likely break loose from the fiber and bleed. But I think it is a worthwhile experiment just to see what happens! Maybe use an acid dye like hot pink for the wool side and turquoise for the cotton side. I imagine that would create a beautiful marbled appearance in the fibers. Or a muddy one where the wool feels kinda crunchy from both acid and alkaline baths and the yarn ends up stained and bleeding instead of dyed.
What do you think, my Fellow Fiber Knomads? Should we go for it? Let me know your ideas in the comments, it might be coming to a blog near you.
Til next time,
Nic Frost
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