Well, there you go! It took some time to conclude my Natural Dye study course. All of the pieces needed to be washed with neutral soaps and labelled. Since I had already labelled the first lot of samples with those nifty stickers from my dye kit, I did not wash those. I am smart enough to understand that the cloth will be a little lighter and more malleable after washing.
But I did wash heaps of other stuff. When all was dry I laid them out on the floor as a gradient. 100 different shades in multiples types of fibres. When you look at all the colours like that you can see the accomplishment!
I spent two days preparing my dye journals. As I went about week by week I cut out small swatches and pasted them in the Module lessons. But now I wanted a gradient dye journal. In fact, I wanted two! One dye journal is at the back of my Module dye journal. There I noted all the vitals for each swatch, and counter referenced to the lesson. Then I made a smaller dye journal (though the same size of swatch cloth) in the dye journal that I use for all my wool yarn dyes. There I just noted the dye and WoF.
That last bit was definitely a labour of love but will be so worthwhile going forward. I have already started on my sideline project and dyed with weld today. I will be taking large handwoven organic cotton muslin shawls from India and naturally dyeing them myself to sell in my studio, at the market and site.
My outside dye studio is closer to being finished. I have hot and cold running water! I had a sliding door for about 5 hours. Unfortunately the colour of the door was wrong and they took it out to reuse the glass and make me a new door in a colour that matches the house. So I wait again. When finally in, that wall needs to be finished and the shelving and lighting put in.
