Tray dyeing and some quilting decisions
To make a backing for my shot cotton "Spectrum" quilt (see here and here ), I decided to experiment with tray dyeing, a method of getting multiple colors on one piece of fabric that I hadn't tried before. I've very happy with the results. I picked up three color samples at the paint department of Lowes, and then used my swatch book from Carol Soderlund's class to match up a dye formula. As you can see below, I got very close indeed! I was especially pleased because the dyeing circumstances were not ideal. My dye concentrates were a couple of months old, including two weeks not refrigerated. I did the dyeing in the basement, with an ambient temperature of about 58 degrees. Many dyers don't do dyeing if they can't get the temperature up to 70 or warmer, but this convinces me that colder temperatures work just fine. I did leave the dye on the fabric for 24 hours before washing out; if it had been warmer, I could have done a wash-out a...