Weaving with Easy Dye Cotton

 A friend and I bought some of the new Easy Dye cotton yarn from the Woolery.  I bought several pounds of the 10/2 cotton and now wish I had purchased at least one pound of the 20/2 as well.  There are instructions online on how to paint or dye the cotton, but actually there isn't much to learn.  The cotton is treated with some magic that allows it to accept dye - any dye, without the chemical assistants we usually have to use. 

My first warp  was a 15 yards of black 8/2 rayon, sett at 30 epi.  Too close a sett, but live and learn for next time.  I wove 5 scarves, each with a different treadling sequence.  In order to paint the design, I mixed up a selection of fiber reactive dyes - no soda ash added, just the dye.  I also mixed up a bit of sodium alginate for a thickner, so the dye would stay put when I painted the scarf.  Then I washed the scarf in warm water, rung it out as much as possible and started painting.  After the surface looked good, I flipped it and painted the other side.  Some of the dye had bled through, but not enough to look good.  Therefore, the front and back of the scarf are not exactly the same.

This is the second painting attempt.  I put the scarf in yellow dye and let it sit in the sun for a while.  The black rayon bled a bit and the E-Z Dye cotton sopped up that dye, making the whole scarf a bit greenish.  Then I painted it with reds and greens.

This is what the unpainted blank scarf looks like.  Someone bought one of these because she wanted the black and white look (well, actually shades of gray because of the weave structure).

 

I understand that you can use acid dyes (without the acid), union dyes (but then why would you bother) and natural dye extracts.  I tested a bit of old cochineal dye on the cotton and it took without any mordanting.    One last piece of information about these dyes.  Once the scarf is dyed, there is no dye bleed.  I put mine out in the sun for 30 minutes, but I suspect I wouldn't have had to do that either.  Which leads me to another thought.  I wouldn't want to use this cotton for napkins or towels.  They would pick up every stain, although this might make for some abstract design work.  Who knows?

 

As an addendum to this post, a friend found this link to an article that explains the process used to treat the yarns.  It's a bit technical, but wade through it if you are interested in using Easy Dye cotton.

The Whole Nine Yards

These three shawls were on my loom for a very long time but were finally finished the later part of October and I'm just getting around to putting this blog post together. Nothing but procrastination here! The shawl in the photo above is called Morocco Sands and I was really excited that it turned out well because I took a leap of faith when I chose the weft color. The warp for all three shawls was a rayon boucle in a dull rose and a 16/2 bright coral ring spun rayon. I had a chartreuse boucle on my shelves that appeared to be just about the same value as the combined warp color, so I went for it. Irridescence was achieved and I was so pleased that I got it right!

This shawl is called Glen Eagle and is one of my one shuttle plaid designs. Actually, the plaid is in the weave structure which is a networked twill threading and treadling. The tie up was 3/1 and 1/3 twill blocks. The twill blocks are shattered in the weave structure and fade in and out on the shawl.

This last shawl is called Esperanza for "hope" in the cure for breast cancer. I'm donating the entire amount of my sale proceeds to Women of Worth, in Grass Valley.

Network Twills

Cat that swallowed the canary look -- eh! This is the threading job -- 900 ends that I stretched out forever. But all went well -- no threading errors and the warp wove smoothly and relatively quickly. I did use a clamp temple system that I meant to photograph, but maybe next time I'll remember to take my camera to the studio.


This was actually the second shawl from the warp. I wanted a lace like look on the threading which was primarily intended for the green and gold shawl that follows. I guess it will have to be called mock lace, because there really aren't any lacy bits in the fabric -- just a very subtle pattern that changes in the light. The weft on this shawl was a cream color tencel.

This was the baby I was after when I did the design. It is almost too graphic, but I'm satisfied with it. The interesting thing is that because of the twill weave structure, this shawl had a shrinkage rate of 20% in width -- or about 4" more than the mock lace shawl did. Warp and weft are ring spun rayon.

It's quite long - and very luxurious. Hope it doesn't make a potential buyer dizzy

Now I've got three empty looms. I have plans for a silk shawl on one of the Baby Wolf looms and maybe another shawl warp on the AVL. This next AVL warp will be 9 yards, for three shawls. It makes for three generous length pieces. 6 yards makes one shawl a bit truncated for my taste.