Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Lesson One Onion Dyeing Dear Diary,


Pastel shade of wool are sometimes difficult 
to work into a primitive penny rug.
Sometimes it is difficult to find just the 
right shade of recycled wool.
Don't pass on those pastel shades Ladies.


Difficult to believe you started with pale 
pinks, mauves and orange pennies.
This is a sample of the pale pennies in a full
strength 'mother' dye bath.
Onion dye is also wonderful to 
dye cottons and threads.
It gives a nice 'old' look to those cottons.


The 'mother' onion dye is the water straight from the
dye pot with the onion skins.
Half water and half of the 'mother' dye gives you
more shades from the same pastel wool.


Those same pastel pennies go in a dye bath of
two parts water to one part 'mother' dye and 
four parts water to one part 
'mother' onion dye,
Four shade of pennies from the 
same pastel penny circles.

I have shown only a few shade of pastels
but what would happen if you 
included darker shades..plaids..
very ugly reds and blues and greens.
Beautiful multi antique and 
primitive shade of pennies with only
a few onion skins and some ugly wool.

Next lesson I will show how to 
make the 'mother' batch of dye.
Pots and everything you need to 
start dyeing wool the very easy,
very simple and primitve way.

Ladies save those onion skins and 
get out your really ugly wool!
Until tomorrow..
cee






6 comments:

Colleen MacKinnon; Penny Rugs and More said...

Nice post. Easy to understand. The new shades are really lovely. Thanks for the visual Cee!

Primitives By The Light of The Moon said...

Great post...love how the onions changed the look of the pastels! Thanks for sharing :)

Jeanne said...

Wow!! that is amazing. I'm so glad I found your blog..thanks for sharing your knowledge and expertise. Now I need to find my "ugly" wool.

Cee Rafuse said...

Thanks Everyone!
Lots more to show about dyeing over the
next few weeks.

Jeanne there is still space in the penny rug group if you would like to join.
I sent an invite, not sure if you got it. I think you would love it!
cee

Carol said...

I'm off to the store

Colleen MacKinnon; Penny Rugs and More said...

I always love over dyeing pennies. They turn out so nice and prim and imperfect.