Dyeing Wool for Flowering Trees

This time of year in Pennsylvania is an inspiring time of trees and flowers bursting with color.  Each season has its own beauty but spring in my neighborhood is a plethora of flowering trees.

It inspired me to want to create them with wool.  I have found in my work with felted wool landscapes that the lovely merino wools that are commercially available in many colors just don't work well for trees and foliage.  They are too smooth, too thin and too stringy for the texture needed.  What does work well is chunky, short-staple fibers that some would overlook as being too coarse.  But these make the best trees.  I have been on the lookout for this type of wool for dyeing but it is rare.  I did, however, document one dye session with what I had in stock and recorded it below.


The first necessary ingredient for dyeing wool is to collect several shower scrubbies made out of tubes of  netting.

Shower Scrubbies

Cut the string that keeps the scrubbies in a ball so that you end up with long tubes of netting.  These will be used to separate and presoak the wool in preparation for dyeing.

Wool Ready for Presoak

I use a scale to measure out 1 ounce bundles of wool and insert them into the tubes of netting and tie a knot in the netting to keep them separated.  One ounce of wool is a good amount to start with because you can dye a lot of different colors and yet not go through a lot of wool doing it.  If you document how you got each color, you can dye a lot of one color in the future if you find that you need to do that.  So far, one ounce works best for me to have enough but not too much of a wide variety of colors.  Over the past couple of years I have been dyeing varieties of fibers in varieties of colors, each method a little bit different.  You can't buy this range of fibers in this range of  colors anywhere at any price even if you do marry a millionaire to try to do it :)

Wool is Weighed and Bound

I fill the washing machine with warmish water and one capful of Synthropol liquid detergent to presoak before dyeing.  The Synthropol is a special soap that strips fibers of any grease or finishes and opens up the scales of the wool to accept dye more readily.  You can purchase this online on any site that sells dyeing supplies.  Skipping this step will result in dyeing less saturated colors.  I use my washing machine for presoaking and spinning out wet wool - never for washing or agitating.  If you use your washing machine for washing wool you will end up with a felted mess.

Wool Bundles Presoaking in Synthropol

While the wool is presoaking, I prepare my dyepots  - one for each color I plan to dye that day. I start my color planning with the fabric color swatches I have collected over the years.

Fabric Swatches

 I also pick out the dye color recipe cards I have created over time so that I know what colors I will end up with.  On this day, I decided to dye medium to light versions of each color so that I could create light and shadow colors in future wool trees. 

Color Swatches, Dye Recipes and Dyepots Ready

On the left side of the photo you can see some of the bottles of acid dyes I keep mixed with water for each dye session.  The dyes need to be mixed from powder added to boiling water so I keep about 1/2 to 1 cup of each color available so I don't have to mix powder dyes from scratch each time.  I can get better mediums and lights when using premixed dye concentrates and the colors are much more predicatable.  These keep at room temperature in my unfinished basement for months - maybe forever.

Next I place the dye colors I need in each dyepot and then add the presoaked wool that has most of the water removed during the spin cycle of my washing machine.  I have to open the mesh tubes to get the bundles out and hang the netting to dry for the next session.  These also keep for years.

Dyeing Wool

I swish the wool around the dyepot with the large plastic spoons until every inch is soaking in the color.  Then I dump the entire contents of the dyepot into freezer ziploc bags.  The wool is "stewing in its own juice" by staying in the freezer bags and its dyebath while it "cooks."

I place the ziploc bags in a large canning pot with galvanized garbage can lids upturned that act as shelves in the canner and keep the bags off of the bottom of the metal canning rack where they would melt if they touched the hot metal.  If you need to purchase just the garbage can lids without the garbage can, you'll need to go to a Mennonite store to get them- only they will understand. 

I have the canner simmering on a low boil and leave it for one hour while I clean up and prepare for the next dye session or experiment with new colors and make up color recipe cards for them.

When the water in each dyebath ziploc bag looks clear, the wool has absorbed all of the colors and is "cooked" enough.  I remove the plastic bags from the canner and let them cool on my cooling rack.  My cooling rack is made out of a gridded ceiling tile resting on a table.  The clothespins keep the bags from falling over and leaking water everywhere.  by the way, the freezer bags can be reused over and over again before they leak.  The regular ziploc bags are not strong enough to dye with.

Wooling Cooling on Rack

I squeeze out the dyebath water in my laundry sink and place each bundle of wool loosely in my washing machine filled with warmish water.  I slosh the wool a bit just to rinse it with clean water.  Then I put the washing machine on the spin cycle and spin out the water so that the wool seems almost dry.  DO NOT AGITATE.  Do not leave the room while you are using the washing machine or you may forget and the washing machine will continue it's cycle and do what washing machines do best and you will return to a mud colored mixture of blended matting that looks like dryer lint (don't ask.)

Last of all is the drying phase.  The colored bundles of wool are placed on a drying rack overnight in front of a fan.  They are actually ready to use in 2 or 3 hours of drying provided they are elevated and drying underneath as well as on top.

Wool Drying on Rack

I created the drying rack using a gridded plastic ceiling tile laid on top of plastic dyepot bins so the air from the fan can circulate.

Below are the finished wool bundles with the original fabric swatch colors tucked inside that I was trying to dye.  Most of them turned out as planned.  If I have any dye surprises I document how I got that on a new dye recipe card so I can reproduce it in the future. 

Finished Wool

Monet's Greens

This past couple of weeks I have been spending a lot of time holding my newborn grandson while his mother shops, sleeps, eats, or just gets dressed.  Some days, all I could do to comfort him was to sit outside in the garden swing and talk to him.  My son is away in military training for awhile so his wife and baby are staying with us and her family while he is away.

Simon Josiah Hall

Simon Josiah Hall

I have not been able to do much color theory but the following is what I did get done this past week.

 One of my favourite colors is green.  I have more green fabric in my stash than any other color and the largest Walmart plastic bin full of green wool that I have collected or dyed.  Believe it or not, sometimes I don't have the greens I need when I'm working on a painting.  The merino and other smooth wools are not the best choice for creating textured foliage and shrubbery in a landscape.  Below are pictures of the foliage made from the type of wool that is best for foliage.  I get it from Peace Fleece in lovely blended colors but I have seen it elsewhere called just plain "fleece."  I have a lot of it in different colors but, again, I seem to be short on greens.  So I decided to dye some from a bag of white fleece I got from a woolen store going out of business a few years ago.

Autumn Tree

Morning Mist

I have been looking for more of it to purchase for dyeing and I wonder if any of you can help me find it?  Below is a picture of it.  It is very rare, I think because it looks like a by-product of the wool industry and is considered poor qualtiy for spinning or knitting.  It looks like a mixture of short wools with chunky nepps and fluffyness that would not stay together for spinning.  It is probably discarded.  I would like to find some in bulk to purchase at a reasonable price.  Here is a picture of what it looks like before it is dyed.

Chunky Short-Fiber Fleece

Close-up of Chunky Fleece

If anyone knows what this is and where to get it, I would greatly appreciate it.  I am running low and want to dye some more soon.

I did some research on Monet paintings and what kind of greens he used for his lovely landscapes. 

Monet

Monet

These are just two of many paintings I studied but I assembled some fabric swatches of the green colors I was seeing in his paintings, as best as I could make out on my computer screen.  I have a collection of  6 inch swatches I have taken from my fabric stash that I use to color-match when I am dyeing wool in the basement. 

Swatch Color Collection

I pulled out all the greens I thought were in the paintings and created a color spread to reproduce using the chunky white wool to dye with acid dyes.

Monet's Greens2

Monet's Greens1

Monet's Greens3

Monet's Greens4

Here is a photo of some of  the finished greens dyed the colors of the fabric swatches tucked inside them. 

Dyed Fleece in Monet Colors

To see more of my wool dyeing process, visit my earlier blog from May 21, 2011 entitled,"Dyeing Roving for Felting." 

I also was able to dye more alpaca fibers from my neighbor in cloud colors both muddy and bright.

Alpaca Clouds

I will be dyeing yarn for hand sewing grasses and stalks as well as nepps for foliage in the near future.  Tomorrow, I will by dyeing more chunky fleece in the spring flowering tree colors I am seeing all over my neighborhood.

Flowering Tree

     

Color Magic for Felters

I have been studying color theory as it relates to needle felting and I wanted to share my experiences.  First of all, as a quilter and fabric dyer, I have been coloring fabric and using color theory for years now.  As a quilter, you can go into a fabric store, purchase a pretty print, add fabrics that coordinate with that print and you have a pretty quilt. 

Commercial Fabric Color Choices

The fabric manufacturers have made all the decisions for you.  As a fabric dyer, you can purchase dye in the colors you want and with a little experimentation, you can dye many values and many hues that tend to be solidish colors on your cotton fabric. 

Hand Dyed Cotton for Quilts


I applied my dyeing fabric principles to dyeing wool and it was an easy step for me to do so. The methods are a little different and the dyes are of different chemicals but you get basically the same thing – wool that is dyed the color you chose ahead of time for it to be.



Hand Dyed Wool

For more information about dyeing wool, go to a previous blog post from May 24, 2011 called, “Dyeing Roving for Felting.”

 How much more can there be to color theory?

A lot more.  And I’m just getting started.  First of all, I started studying color theory from a painter’s point of view.  I did this for a particular reason.  Whenever I got ready to start a new felted painting, I was too overwhelmed to know what to do first.  I have dyed enough roving in each range of colors to fill large plastic bins full and feel like a very wealthy woman when I pull them all out and look at them. 

Hand Dyed Wool Roving

However, what colors do I use first?  Where do I start?  Which colors do I NOT use?  There must be some way to make color decisions besides ALL THE COLORS AT ONCE to choose from.  What do painters do anyway to come up with the color schemes for their paintings?  There must be something more to  choosing colors for  painting pictures.  All my previous felted paintings I just used my intuition but found it difficult to choose which piece of wool to work with at any given time.  This can lead to overly busy paintings or too many colors.

So I got some color theory books aimed specifically at painters and downloaded a DVD course by Richard Robinson.  Some of it was new material and some was basic to what most artists know.  So here it is:

The Color Wheel 

This information is found in many places on the internet and I won’t go into detail here
about this except for the experiments I did with it.   All the colors of the rainbow fit around a circle on a wheel.

Basic Color Wheel

 

These colors can be used to choose harmonious colors for a project or mix paint colors together for a painting.  The colors can be mixed in several ways.  If you take 3 adjacent colors anywhere on the wheel and use them together in a project, you will have color harmony.  These are called “Analagous” colors. 

Analagous Felted Colors

 If you use colors that are directly opposite each other on the wheel, they are called “Complementary” colors and they can do 2 things – create totally new colors or balance each other in a painting.  That last sentence was the real eye opener for me.

I began to experiment with the colors that are opposite each other on the color wheel and I used student grade acrylic paint.  I started with the one pure color in the center of the wheel and the other pure color on the first spoke, in this case, yellow and purple. 

Bright Yellow/Purple Mixture

I added a tiny bits of purple to the yellow along the spokes of the wheel in increasing increments until both colors had completely disappeared and created a totally new color – in this case brown.  I then proceeded to create another wheel and added white to lighten the colors.  They did lighten somewhat but I needed to add a lot of white to lighten the colors up to pastel levels.

Then I tried red and green – the Christmas colors.  These colors look nice together, as we all know every December, but they also can be mixed together to create new colors.  There was a certain point on each wheel where both colors were completely neutralized and had created either a muddy brown or muddy gray. 

Bright Green/Red Mixture

The pure colors I started with are the red circle in the center and the bright green spoke at the top of the wheel.  I added tiny increments of red to the green and was surprised how dark the colors became.  I created the wheel on the right by adding white paint enough to create pastel colors.  The red and green together created olive green and then brown. 

I was most surprised by the orange and blue combination.  I started with very brilliant orange and my most brilliant blue.  But as I added more and more orange to the blue, it became a very dark navy.  How did the two colors which began so bright become so dark when combined?  Who would have thought that could happen? 

Bright Blue/Orange Mixture

But even more surprising was when I transferred these experiments to needle felted wool.  I used wool colors that were identical to the paint colors I had used to create the wheels of Complementaries.  Wool cannot “change” color.  Yellow wool stays yellow and purple wool stays purple.  What a surprise to see that as I added increments of the opposite color, the wool itself transformed into the new, darker colors that paint had created.  Well, actually, your eyes are deceived into thinking you see new colors.  Wool fibers do keep their own color but the opposite color fibers “mix” in your eye to seem like new colors.  Painters go to great lengths to get that to happen in their paintings but we felters can make it happen naturally with wool. 

Complementary Colors

An example of this is in the Bottle Study.  The table looks like a pale gray in the sunlight. 



Finished Bottle Study

I placed a warm brown colored wool as the “underpainting” or first coat of wool and felted it down.  I used pale blue as the second layer and felted it down.  The two colors “mixed” and created gray. 

Underpainting the Table a Warm Brown

Adding Blue on Top Makes the Table Look Gray

But there is more.  Painters struggle with how to create shadows in their paintings.  What color is a shadow?  Some painters use black to darken their colors in the shadow areas.  Others use brown or gray to create shadows.  The Impressionist painters used COMPLEMENTARY COLORS to create their shadows.  Can you see from the painted wheels how bright colors darken when their complement is added to them?  If you are painting a green tree, use a dark variety of red for the shadows.  If you are painting a yellow object, use purple as the shadow.  I used this in the haystacks in the August Afternoon felted painting. The haystacks are a warm gold and their shadows are a cool purple.

August Afternoon

 For the red trees in Provincetown I used green in the shadows to create the darkness.  The addition of dark green in the shadows made them appear darker than the dark red I also used in the shadows. 

Adding Green to Red Shadows Makes Them Appear Darker

Provincetown

I knew this last year but I didn’t realize how dramatic it could be until I did the painted and then felted experiments with pure, bright colors.  Wool naturally lends itself to be “painted” in the Impressionistic style.  How cool is that?

Here is a visual recap of the lesson on Complementary Wool Colors.  I used the exact wool colors to correspond with the paint colors I used for the wheels, although the purple wool looks more blue in this photo than it actually is in real life. 

Purple/Yellow

Red/Green

Blue/Orange

Stay tuned for more color theory next time.

Trip to Mexico

Villa Del Palmar Cancun Mexico

I have been away for the past week to Cancun Mexico.  Here are a few pictures of my trip.  I was surprised that I didn't take more pictures.  I stayed with my sister in her timeshare resort, the Villa Del Palmar.  Our husbands had to work so we went together.  We had a great time shopping, snorkelling, touring, talking and eating.  Here are some of the places we visited:

Isla Contoy

Isla Contoy

Maya Cenote or Cave Pool

Chichen Itza

It was only a week long vacation and now I am home.  However, I leave for California for a couple of weeks with my first newborn grandson, Simon Josiah.  I will be helping my daughter-in-law with the baby when my son goes back to work.  He is a rocket scientist at Edwards Airforce Base and has a few "Dad" days off to be with his new son. 

Simon Josiah

Toby and Simon

Simon Josiah

Joshua and Stephanie Hall

I'm sure they will need help with the grandpuppy as well. 

I desperately miss my felting machine and art lessons but they will have to wait until I get back from my trip.  I have a very busy teaching schedule this spring and hope to be creating some new work soon.