Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Getting around the dye ban

Considering this is my theme I have been paying little no attention at all to it as a result of General Life Craziness.  And the prospect of dying fabric for this quilt was severely limited by the spouse-imposed ban on me messing with dye in our new cream kitchen. Entirely reasonable I agree. But entirely easy to get around. After all turmeric is both a dye and a food and the latter makes it fair game in a kitchen!

I used 4 tablespoonsfuls-ish of turmeric to 2 pints of water, boiled the water and let it simmer for fifteen minutes, took it off the heat and put the fabric in. The lighter fabric was in there for about an hour and a half or so. The darker one was the same then I let it dry and put it back in to the same dye bath when I went to work this morning and took it out about 6pm.

Now all I have to do is figure out what to do with it!

6 comments:

stART said...

Wow! I had no idea tumeric could create these gorgeous colours - and so different, too!

Kristin L said...

I think it's great that you actually used the palette to dye colors for the palette.

BTW, I was at the health food store today and saw a bottle of asafoetida. I almost bought it, but passed.

Diane Perin said...

Gorgeous colors. And this makes me marvel that when we did chocolate, no one dipped their fabric in chocolate to see what would happen. Perhaps we've become more adventurous since then?!

Unknown said...

I confess. When I photographed this the darker colour was still slightly damp. When I ironed it dry it became much lighter but still a touch darker than the earlier one. Ah well.

barbara said...

i've used commercial dyes, but never organic ones. how permanent are they and what special washing do
they require? are they safe to use in quilts or will they bleed?

WhiteStone said...

I'm curious with Barbara...how permanent? Will they bleed when washed?