Boxing Day Blues

Or more precisely glorious shades of teal, a light turquoise and a pale golden yellow. After the mayhem and excess of Christmas Day it has been lovely to spend the day in my studio dyeing fabric. A couple of years ago I took a 5 day Colour Studies Class with Leslie Morgan of C2C.(http://www.committedtocloth.uk/). It revolutionized how I use colour in my work. Leslie teaches a two step dyeing process that creates a family of 15 harmonious colours. One of the colour families I dyed during that class was the extended teal and brown family shown above. I have been using these fabrics in some of my Hidden Message pieces but needed to 'top up' my stash. So today I created 5 dye buckets - a dark, medium and light teal, a light turquoise and a pale golden yellow. I used a high immersion process and lots of agitation as I want fairly flat colour. I am a chemist in my day job so needless to say I keep detailed records of all my dyeing sessions. This allows me to reproduce colours fairly accurately. The dye buckets will be left overnight before I rinse and dry the fabrics. The second step will be carried out in dark, medium and light brown dye buckets. I will use a high immersion process again but with a little less agitation so that I end up with 22 different, slightly textured colours that go together perfectly!