Depth of Shade

For the next show at the Guthrie I will be hand painting nine silk kimonos for the "Madame Butterfly" except in M. Butterfly. It is by far the most intensive dye and painting project to come my way since I started my employment. To create a unified palette, as well as to have a slightly more predictable base color to start with, my first step is to dye the yardage for each kimono. Once dyed, a discharge paste will be applied to lighten the color for the hand painted designs.

Step one...dying....

I opted to use Procion on the silk in lieu of an acid or metal complex dye due to the larger stock of colors I have in the dye shop and a familiarity with this dye type. Silk holds Procion fairly well. It can be dyed with the same auxiliaries as for cotton and linen. However, for a brighter color and better wash-fastness I altered the recipe opting to use acdic acid instead of soda ash...essentially treating the procion as an acid dye.

So far most of the colors processed beautifully. The color palette is very cool...mostly soft blues, aquas and lilacs. It wasn't until I started dying the more pale shades that I ran into difficulties.

The aqua shade, despite being swatched at a 0.5% depth of shade, became very dark very quickly. Fifteen minutes into the dye bath the fabric was already about drying to the shade the 3% DoS swatch had been. On top of that, the blues in the dye were picking up much quicker than the greens. Just goes to show that even with meticulous swatching and math, things can go askew.

So how to fix the process?

I let the dye bath soak an additional fifteen minutes. If I have to color correct, I'd rather have an even dye job to start with. Unevenness is a bit more of a challenge to correct on a shade so pale. I rinsed it through the handwash cycle on our machines twice to remove as much of the excess dye as possible. Then let it air dry completely to better gauge how far off my color was.

After the rinses, much of the blue had come out leaving the fabric the appropriate hue, but still far too dark. To lighten it I soaked the length of fabric in a bath of glauber's salt....about 2 cups in 10 gallons. I was surprised how much color leeched off of the fabric into the dye bath. After another rinse and a complete air dye, the fabric was substantially closer to its target color.

In hind sight, the depth of shade should have been closer to a 0.3%. And the unpredictably may be due to the age of the dye I used...that particular jar was one of the few that did not have a date, and contrary to popular believe, Procion does have a shelf life.

Live and learn.