Happy 2018 fiber folk!

It’s Kelsey again and I’m back at the mill in possibly the coldest place in the world right now (just kidding!) Experiencing the recent bomb cyclone weather in Vermont has been a bit of a transition. Back at home in NJ I’m not used to dressing up in a hat, gloves, scarf, snow boots and even snow pants just to drive to work or the grocery store! But I’m loving it. And today, at 50 degrees, it might as well be summer.

Anyway, with all the snow piling up, we figured we would put it to good use at the mill and dye some scarves. We set up two large plastic bins to catch the melting snow and then placed a screen flat across the top of one and a lid slanted on the other. Then we arranged the scarves in random clumps and covered them in snow.

 Next was the fun part! We squirted our colors all over the snow in no particular pattern. The randomness is part of the mystery. After an agonizing 24 hours, the snow had completely melted and left our scarves ready to be heated and rinsed so the dye would set.

Ta Da!

Lessons Learned:

1. Don't use too much dye. The scarves were very light but we were a bit heavy-handed with the dyes. Less is more in this case.
2. White space is good. Similar to number one, if we had left more white space we probably would have avoided all the colors running into one another. Also, it would have yielded a funkier tie-dye effect.
3. Material matters. All of the scarves are made of 100% silk but one of them is shiny. This one came out much nicer than the others. (See the horizontal photo above)
4. Slanted is best. We found with the screen, the snow melted towards the middle, taking the dye with it. Therefore, the scarves in that area ended up brown with all the color mixing.

For our first attempt, I would say we did rather well and have plenty of adjustments to make. This was such a clever and fun project that I can’t wait to try it again. I’m sure we will have even prettier results next time!