Dyeing

I have done a little bit of dyeing but not enough to feel comfortable with it. We have two dyeing study groups locally but both are full and not taking new members, so when a third group started I jumped in. We had our first dyeing session last weekend and used Procion MX fiber reactive dyes. I dyed four skeins of Tencel, two of cotton and two of a Tencel/silk blend. The results are shown here:

The four Tencel skeins are on the right, the orange ones are cotton and the pale ones are the Tencel/silk blends. I agitated too much when I washed them so they look like a tangled mess. I did wind one of the Tencel skeins into a ball and it worked fine. I'm sure the cotton skeins will also unravel well, but I'm pretty sure the Tencel/silk blend skeins are toast. They're not only very tangled but for some reason they didn't take the dye very well, so I'm not all that unhappy to lose them. I'll try to unravel them but I don't have much hope.

Now that I've got these under my belt, I may be more inclined to just set aside a day for dyeing in the basement. I'd like to play with more color blending and then, later, try some acid dyes on protein fibers.