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Silk Purse Out of a Sow’s Ear?

Yesterday I dyed and over-dyed some fabric. I knew I needed more greens and browns for an upcoming project, but didn’t have much white PFD (prepared for dyeing) fabric. Then I realized I could over-dye some of the ugly, ugly, ugly fabric from some of my first attempts. After all, I wanted swamp green and mud….and the moosh of all colors makes mud, so how could I lose?

My favorite piece is the ochre “rock” which started out as a nearly-solid peachy tan:

OK….Blogger is working again! Yeah! That means I can now upload photos again. The other one that turned out way cool (I think anyway) is one that I’ll use for the background / sky in the swamp area (so am I the only one that was surprised to learn that yellow plus black make olive green?)….

Anyway, it’s also possible to salvage the uglies. Here is what I began with (this piece, by the way, is on the back of my African guy–Bijagos Warrior–didn’t think to take pictures before I overdyed…anyway, you can see how UGLY this is!).

Here’s what it looked like after adding more dye (yellows and burnt oranges):

Still not exactly beautiful, but WAY more useable. It doesn’t show in this picture, but there are really cool crystally markings, and a soft green hue that will work for leaf canopy, to give some contrast and definition to the leaves. There were some over-dyed pieces that began as blue, ended up being a bit too brilliant green after adding both lemon and warm yellows. So, they went back into the dye-pots today…used thinned navy and “safari” gray, a gray with a yellowish cast. And the tree bark turned out too reddish-orange (I want swamp, not redwood), so added some greeny-brown and blue, and we’ll see how it looks tomorrow.

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