Fun with overdyed threads

I told you how I was playing with my dyes the day we had no power and I didn't go into work til late (if I didn't, oops. I was playing with my dyes and some spare floss the day we had no power and I didn't go into work til late last Thursday.) I finally finished the process last night. (It shouldn't take that long, but I have been a little busy the last couple days and didn't get around to doing it til now) I steamed the floss to set the dye, then rinsed it. I didn't notice that it ran all over the paper towels I had it on, so that is pretty cool.

I only used 4 colors--I couldn't exactly spread my stuff out all over our front walk. Looking at these colors, it's amazing the difference the base color makes in the final product. I used a pale blue and a green on DMC 3072 and 754. On the pale grey, it's a beautiful bright blue and grey-ey green. Like Monet's Waterlilies, On the peach, the green stays pretty similar, but the blue turns into a beautiful slate-y blue that is just amazing. It's just soft and pastel, it made me think of lovely irises when I saw the finished skein. If I get this business going, that wil be in the line! I also have a pretty rosy grey base with peacock and green on it that is hazy, but it's pretty, soft country colors. But it just stuns me the HUGE difference that the base color makes. You would never imagine two colors could look so different! That is really the beauty of dyeing your own work; you get to create new colors, and the sweet part is, you never know what the color is going to turn out to be til it's dried, so you get some mystery!

I do know these aren't my best work. The ones I did at CATS were way more beautiful, but I'm trying. I think the next time I do it, I am gonna focus on doing skeins with more the same color. These are fun to play with but all the color changes aren't that practical to stitch with. There aren't a lot of pieces, unless it's doodles or monochrome sampler freebies, where it looks good to wildly change colors every 3 stitches. I like my skeins in the same color family--they look good. So we'll see.