Lace Dyeing

This week I've been doing a bit of lace dyeing. I only needed to dye one lace motif for a new crazy block that I've started, but one thing led to another and before I knew it, I was testing all the colours that I had. A simple task became a major event!

I have two brands of lace dye/paint that I use. The one I tend to use the most is Ozecraft Dye. The people that sell this brand always have a stand at the major quilt shows around Australia. I think that there are 33 colours in the range and I have 15 of them. The colours are nice and soft straight from the bottle but to be colourfast you have to dry them with a hairdryer or microwave.
I found out the hard way that they are not colourfast if you air dry them and then heat set with an iron.

Ozecraft Dyes

The other brand I have is from Sara's Bloom, I bought this set of dyes when I was at the International Quilt Festival in Houston in 2010. This is a set of 7 colours and you can mix them together to make a huge variety of other colours. This was the main reason that I hadn't used them much because I wasn't sure what colours I could make.
On the spur of the moment I decided to use the colours and mix them together and make a colour chart. They make some beautiful colours and the advantage to these dyes are that they are colourfast and permanent without any heat setting.

Sara's Bloom Dyes

Here is the colour chart I made with the Ozecraft dyes.

Ozecraft Colours

Here is the chart I made with mixing the Sara's Bloom Dyes.

Sara's Bloom Colours

Having these charts is going to make it so much easier when I have to dye lace in the future.

When I dye a lace motif and I am trying to be particular where I place the colours, I pin the motif to a piece of styrofoam.

That was the end of my dye painting for now but I am much better prepared for next time.

Bye for now,
Linda