Dye Results

For those of you who read my previous posts you know that I am responding to Robin's  comment / request  to find a sage grey/green or celery colored wool recipe.  I sent her a picture of a small piece I had left and had hopes of reproducing the color.  Actually that small piece was all I had left because the nicer pieces had been used up so I'm glad the sage color is one she was looking for.


These are the two piles of wool which were the subject of the first two pots.

This is the recipe using Cushing Acid Dye:

1/2 t. Copenhagen Blue
1/4 t. Khaki Drab
1/4 t. Chartreuse
in 1 cup boiling water. 

From my previous notes on the piece I was trying to duplicate I'd written that I used 8 tablespoons with half yard of wool.  So decided to start out with 3 T. in one pot and 2 T. in the other pot of wool.  When the water got clear it wasn't dark enough for my liking so I added 1 T.  at a time until one pot had 5T. and the other had 4T.

Knowing that there was still about 6 tablespoons left of the dye quickly got more wool, put in a fast soak (I doubt  the core was completely saturated tho) and did a 3rd pot.

This is a picture of what I sent to Robin to ask if any of these is what she was looking for and her reply was the middle one.... that's the one which I am trying to reproduce.

Now, here's the results of the 3 pots of wool.  I'm sure you'll be able to identify which pieces have the 4, 5 or 6 tablespoons of dye in the pot as it will be increasingly darker.  Since the base wool has grey in it already that lends itself to produce the color I wanted.  And for comparison, you can see what I'd have gotten with a white wool without the grey.  This first picture was taken without a flash AND, the bottom right piece is the piece of wool I was trying to reproduce and is the one pictured in the middle in the above photo.

The picture below was taken with a flash.  Isn't my Magdalena dog rug cute as the dickens??  I'm enjoying looking at it on my harvest table.

I've started a new rug and am thinking that I'll cut and mix this color in for the background.  Or at least that is what I'm thinking.  I was going to do a primitive black but since I've this new wool maybe I'll use that instead.