Strain your dye through fine fabric to remove any left over bits of plants.Keep in mind that you are aiming for several dips in diluted milk. If you don't have a washing machine to spin out the excess milk, then you might decide to dilute your milk solution even more than I suggest (such as a 10:1 ratio of water:milk) as this will reduce the chance of a patchy milk coating. These drips will ultimately cause darker streaks of colour when you come to dye the fabric. When you hang the fabric to dry, it's vital that the milk does not drip down the fabric.If you use the soya milk pretreatment method for "mordanting" your fabric (as per the instructions in my book) remember that the aim is to get a really light coating of soy protein on the fibres and then spin out the excess milk in the washing machine.(Above: pretreating fabric in soya milk) 2. The dye may wash off easily as it hasn't truly bonded to the fibres, but is sitting on the surface over the top of the residue of oil. If you don't prewash your fabric or clothing well, then your dye will most likely attach to the fabric unevenly and look patchy.I tend to dye mostly delicate fabric or clothing and choose to treat it more carefully and don't like the effects of traditional "scouring", but I always thoroughly wash (sometimes more than once) and rinse well. Or maybe you will choose to do a very hot machine wash. For lightweight fabric, you can probably get away with a thorough machine wash as I describe in my book, but for thicker canvas-type fabric and thicker linens, you may decide you need to "scour" the fabric. Clean your fabric as well as possible before dyeing to remove the residues of oils from the manufacture.(Above: viscose cardigan dyed with avocado skins and modified with ferrous sulphate). I hope there are a few tips that you can take away to help you. This is like a brainstorm of all the different things that could happen - and have happened to me at one point. Hopefully some of the points in this blog post will help you resolve any patchy dye problems you experience. Then you can control the pattern, rather than end up with unexpected patchiness.īut even when dyeing smaller pieces of fabric, we can try to do everything perfectly and sometimes the results are slightly patchy for various reasons. In these situations I always suggest using a tie dye technique to create a subtle pattern. It's virtually impossible to produce an even colour across an entire bedspread or pair of curtains. ![]() It's much easier to dye an even colour on smaller pieces of fabric. ![]() You need to keep the fabric moving so the dye doesn't settle into the folds and dye those areas darker. Getting even results can be time-intensive and the biggest secret isn't really a secret after all: the fabric just needs lots stirring. However there are certainly some tricks for getting more uniformity across fabric and garments that you are dyeing. The truth is that is is very tricky to dye with totally even results it's a challenge even for experienced dyers. One of the most frequently asked questions I get is something along the lines of, "How can I dye fabric with natural dyes and get more even colours?"
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