Ikat-ish dyeing

For my next ikat-ish experiment I want to reproduce? interpret? a piece in Lydia Van Gelder’s Ikat II. There are stripes of of warp dyed in long dashes (purple in the layout), stripes of solid orange and a simple woven shibori effect over. The idea is to custom dye the dashes, but in a skein of yarn from which I will wind the warp, so almost or fake ikat, not the real deal.

This weekend was the dyeing. I used my warping wheel  to create a big skein, then tried to mark out the dashes evenly. The best wrapping material I could come up with was plumbers’ teflon tape. There were 100 revolutions of 20/2 silk on the wheel, which compacted down pretty well. In the photo you can see there were a couple of tricky spots where I had to complete the wrapping after taking the silk off the wheel.

Dyeing was my standard immersion in Lanaset dyes. I rinsed the result with the wraps still in place, then took them off for drying. In the photo there is the pink teflon still in place, the next section with the wrapping off but the silk still compressed, and another section I have opened up a bit to look at the boundary of dyed and undyed areas. Generally it seems to have gone fairly well, although there is a consistent problem where I tied the starting end of the wrapping. On every section there is a spot where dye penetrated. Quite acceptable for a first attempt I feel, and I’m pretty confident I can fix it next time.

Here is the unwrapped skein, still wet. The dyed parts are darker than I intended, though they will lighten a fair bit when dry.

The next step will have to wait for next weekend – trying to wind and beam the warp with reasonable alignment.