Banff Dyeing Days

While in residency at The Banff Centre, Donna Clement & I got to know a new type of dye Donna had bought, called Alter Ego. Some very clever chemist has developed these dyes to work on cellulose (cotton, rayon, tencel, bamboo) fibres & protein (silk, wool, soy) at the same time, in the same dye pot & produce different colours. Amazing & exciting. I made 10 stitched samples of 40 different fabrics & threads. Here are the first batch simmering away.

These are the results of our sampling. Each sample of white/unbleached fabric & thread was put into a pot with a different combination of the 5 dyes we had to work with. In each sample the protein fibres & cellulose fibres came out different colours. Wow.

Donna dyed a bunch of devore scarves, which is what the dyes were developed for. Our experimenting gave us lots of ideas for using the dyes in other ways.