Am I Blue?

Tsk, another song title. And yet, it is appropriate at least a little bit. MY head is not blue, but the cloth on this wig head is several shades of sapphire, indigo, cerulean, peacock, sky and other blues.

Cotton stretch jersey was tied with rubber bands to produce a pattern of circles. A section of the finished cloth is shown below. Other folds are used to create stripes, diamonds, and swirls.

In just a few days, I’ll have blue and other colored splotches here and there in spite of nitrile gloves and the best intentions. Reduran, a hand cleaner specially made for dyers really does take a lot of it off, and a coating of clear nail polish helps protect fingers and toes a bit.

We dye outside, and it gets messy, but cleans up pretty darn well, all things considered. The fixative, (soda ash) is only applied to the textiles and ribbons that are meant to be dyed, and with care, you can keep dye splashes and spills from being permanent where you DON’T want them. We do our fixative pre-soak with the water and soda ash in a plastic wading pool.  Another is used for rinsing, and there are lots of buckets involved, for dip dyeing and for carting rinsed loads to the washing machine.

For a few days this week, my back yard will be an explosion of color!Here’s a list of the SPECIFIC colors, and you will note many blues! We print the list on labels using the computer, and then attach the labels to each bottle of dye as it is mixed up. Its very hard to tell the colors apart in liquid form otherwise. We also keep color swatches in labeled plastic bags for visual reference when dyeing. Its hard sometimes to recall WHICH blue is which! Labeling helps. Keeping track helps…and will also become part of blogs, articles, and a future book on dyeing. Books require many months and even years of preparation and gathering of information and images. This one probably wont see publication until 2009—but its on the list and the work rotation.