community of dyers

It was so sad when Michael Fowler's forums closed. I hope that he will find a way to bring them back online. If not, we have no way to communicate with anyone from that list, unless we exchanged private mail via our other addresses. Let's not let that happen again. Any server can go down, so you should always save your own copy of any info that is very important to you, such as your own posts and your friends' email addresses.

It would be great if you'd post your e-mail address here in Member Talk. I'd suggest that you munge your address so that people can read it, but spam robots cannot harvest it. The best way to do this is to spell out the funny characters. For example, you can always send me mail at

     dyestuff [at] pburch [dot] net .

This web site was down for a couple of hours this morning, but I think it's okay now, following some work by my ISP.

I've divided my old page Dyeing Acrylic with Basic Dye into two different pages, About Basic Dyes and How to Dye Acrylic Yarn and Fabric. It's more logical this way and makes more of a point that it's safer to use disperse dyes to color acrylic yarn and fabric. Of course I updated both pages quite a bit, too, while I was at it.

-Paula

Another new page for this site: "Can I dye a dry-clean-only dress?"

-Paula

I finally completed a page on using vinegar or acetic acid in dyeing today, as well as a much briefer page on using ammonium sulfate for dyeing.

-Paula

I know most forums are set up so one can opt to be notified if a new post is made in a thread in which one is participating or interested.

Can anybody tell me how to do that here?

Most sincere thanks,

Katherine in Bali

Greetings. I've just joined this group and have appreciated reading the posts/questions, etc. on it. My question concerns how to create a signature on dyed silk scarves. I have been doing shibori and sumi-painted scarves and have ordered a "chop" as well as a rubber stamp with my logo on it, which I would like to use to "sign" the scarves. I have been using Jacquard silk dyes, on various typesof silk, often in multiple layers. Having tried stencils using black ink on already dyed scarves, the dye spreads and the outline is quite faint. Do others have experience with this...a thickened dye or ink? I'd appreciate any suggestions.

I am running a large scale Tie-Dye activity at a camp this summer. I'm going to have 4-5 groups per day for an entire month. I really want to get into Sun-Dyeing but I have never tried it before and have no idea how to do it. I think it would be an amazing activity especially for groups that will be out of camp on a 2 day camping trip.

either way, I need to let the camp know what supplies to get and how much and I have no clue what to tell them. I know how much Tie-Dye to get for the entire camp but I am not sure how the Setacolor Transparent dyes work.

HELP!!

thanks so much!

~Eli

I need some technical advice... I have a customer who wants me to dye some Chef's coats. She assures me that they are 100% cotton, but I'm concerned that they might have been treated with scotch guard or a similar product to increase their stain-resistance. Is there any way to test for this before I attempt to dye? Or is there a product I can use to remove any such product to expose the cotton? She wants a quick turnaround on these, but I really want to be sure I can successfully dye them before even laundering. Any suggestions?
Thanks!
Judy

It's a silly thing to care about, but I was happy this morning to see that the Sitemeter counted over 7 million visits (and 18.6 million page views) for this site, as of sometime yesterday afternoon.

here's some pictures of some new stuff I just finished. The last thing is a nursing cover - I have to take better pictures!

I'd love some feedback!

~Elisheva
www.Groovesters.com

My Sons Day Car asked me if I could do some sort of Tie-Dye activity with the kids. My immediate inner answer was, no way. But then again, I might be wrong. Has anyone every done Tie-Dye activities with really young children? Is it even possible?

~Elisheva
www.Groovesters.com

I finally installed the new "How to Dye..." menu in the menubar on the main part of my site here, about how to dye different fibers, that some of you helped me a great deal with wording last October. I hope it will make navigation a bit clearer, especially to newcomers to the site. It took me a while to compile the new pages that the menu required.

Now I'm thinking that there's a need for one more new menu, about auxiliary chemicals. It will include pages from the Dye Auxiliaries section of the Frequently Asked Questions section of the site. Should I entitle it "Chemicals", or "Auxiliaries", or what? The name has to be brief to fit into the menubar. "Auxiliaries" is more specific, but it's not a word everyone uses.

just thought i'd introduce myself:
my name is justine, i live in oakland, CA, but i'm originally from new zealand (i've been in the US for just over 18 months).

i work for a local clothing company: we make cotton, rayon, cotton-polyester, and linen garments for our three local stores. i originally worked in the stores, but took over from the previous dyer/stock manager. i have no previous experience with dyeing AT ALL, so this has been quite a strange thing. i was basically walked through the process twice, left a written set of instructions, and that's it! i started the job mid-season, so i was just going off recipes that the previous person had created, but with the advent of summer i've had to be solely responsible for coming up with about 10 new colours for the spring/summer season. someone else brings me fabric colour samples, and then i've had to recreate them... it's been interesting, but i've discovered i seem to have a fairly natural knack for it.

Hi everyone, I'm so glad I found this forum.

I have tried hand dying with turquoise and fuschia. I have used the low water immersion method with Procion MX.

I am looking forward to doing more complex colors and techniques.

Be prepared, I will probably have lots of questions!!!

Here are the pictures of the new menu tests I did yesterday, from the posts that were lost in the database crash....

There was added fallout this morning from the outage a few days ago. The database for this forum was somehow corrupted. When the hosting service fixed the problem, they must have reverted to a backup of the database from a week ago. It's kind of horrifying how badly all these database-driven forums can crash. I know most websites these days are database-driven, but I still like using hard-coded html for my other pages, since they don't really need the advantages provided by a database, as a forum does.

Before they restarted everything, I could see that someone had posted a message about the menus last night, about 1 am US Central time, but I never got to see what it said or even who wrote it, because clicking on the link wouldn't work.

There was a post by tigerb, I recall, giving helpful feedback on which of two new menu designs I should try. There were two wonderful posts by Pia and Tiger with encouragement I badly needed. How I wish I'd saved off a copy of those! They were in reply to a post I made about an email from an unusually ungrateful site user. And Deb wrote an update about her mostly successful attempts to touch up those browns that didn't turn out right the first time.

There was also a post I made about the use of potassium dichromate as a wood dye. I can probably reconstruct most of that one, later on.

Is there anything else that got lost?

Paula

Hello Everybody,

I have worked with dye and prints for more than 15 years. We have a very small community of dyers in South Africa and I am keen to network with more people who work with the medium.

If you would like to take a look at my work, visit my websites...

http://www.handcraftedcolor.co.za Arts & Crafts
http://www.handcraftedcolour.co.za Fashion & Decor
http://www.craftersclasses.co.za

Have a great week in colour!

Kind regards
Melanie

Just curious... I've seen a couple links in signatures, but was wondering who all has blogs on this site. Anyone want to post links here?

I was out of town for most of a week and fell way behind on the hand dyeing Q&A blog (I thought I would be able to post to it from another computer, but it didn't work). I'm glad to see all the good advice here on the forum on mixing rust dye colors and on group projects.

Paula