Painted roving with Easter Egg dye tablets

Today was a pretty dreary and rainy day. Just perfect to spend time in the kitchen dyeing wool. If you have read this blog before you know that now and then I like to use easter egg dyes to dye my fibers. I usually do this in canning jars but today I wanted to see how this dye would paint roving. I didn't actually paint the roving this time, I sprayed the roving. Let me give you the steps.

1. Use empty dish soap bottles (or something similar)

2. Put 3 or 4 tablets of the dye in each bottle.

I used 4 blue in one bottle and 4 red in the other bottle

3. Fill the bottle with a vinegar/water blend and let sit until the tablets are dissolved.

I use 1 part vinegar to 2 parts water

4. While you wait for the tablets, wet your roving but make sure it isn't soaked and place in a baking dish going up and down the length of the dish. You can keep layering until the dish is full.

See picture.

5. Gently squeeze the dye onto the layered roving making stripes. Do one color and then fill in the non colored areas with your second color dye. You may use as many colors as you like.

6. Gently pat down the wool to make sure there is no white showing.

7. Place baking dish in a 300 degree oven for about 20 minutes.

You may use a microwave if your baking dish is small enough

8. Turn off the oven but keep the baking dish in the oven until it cools. When you take it out you can let it stand a bit longer until it is fully cooled. The dye really gets soaked in during this time.
Since I didn't have to use my oven tonight for dinner, I just let the roving stay in there until early this evening.

9. Rinse and set out to dry.

When I finish rinsing my fiber I spin it out in the washer. It takes much of the liquid out and the fiber dries much faster.

I have to say I am very pleased at how this came out. I believe this would work for yarn also. That will be my next experiment. I can't wait for this roving to dry so I can spin it up. I may ply it with something different. I will post pictures when it is spun. Happy Dyeing!!!!! Anne

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