Saturday, August 4, 2007

Natural Dye Reds----Lac

The lac finally came this week! And so finally the Natural Reds series is completed.

I was most disappointed in the lac because the dye took so unevenly. Some spots were a lavender shade, others a more satisfying burgundy. I am lacking in good instructions for dying with lac and maybe that was part of it. If it had all come out the burgundy color, I would have been delighted.

I will be adding some osage orange to the lac dyebath early next week to see if I can get a nice orange for the present Project Spectrum. Then I will play with Logwood and Indigo to see if we can get some nice purples.

2 comments:

Allena said...

Hi,
I'm poking around looking at blogs and checking on my fiber frenziers.

How is the swap going?

You should check out this blog
www.yarnknotzi.com

She does much natural dyeing, and is very smart. She could probably get you going on the right track.

Brooke said...

Where you using lac extract or the bugs?

Also, when you are dyeing fleece sometimes the unevenness in dye take-up is from the fleece itself rather than the dye. Some of the locks may have had more lanolin than others. I have also found that sometimes the very tips take up the most dye.