Recently I received a custom order from a Canadian customer. Two colorways, 8 oz each on merino roving. They use the rovings to make felted soaps. One of the colorways they ordered was my Oahu Sunset which consists of pink, hot fuchsia, yellow sun, vermillion and burnt orange. I generally dye my rovings 4 oz at a time in an enamel coated roasting pan and "bake" them in the over for almost an hour and a half. I use "acid" dyes - the acid that makes them react and set the dye is white vinegar. The vinegar has started to corrode the finish on the dye pots and sometimes I get funny reactions to dye powders on those areas. This time the fuchsia powder drifted on the bottom of the dye pot and combined with the other powders. Sometimes this is okay - the resulting colors blend beautifully with the rest and are just fine. The fuchsia must have some blue in the dye. This time it created purple where it blended with pink and green where it blended with the yellow. This might have been okay but the green was sometimes "muddy" and dark looking and looked brownish.
I took photos (above) and sent them to the client, offering her a discount on those rovings or offering to do them again in a different dyepot. She opted for re-dyeing them. I redyed them in my stainless steel dye pot and eliminated the fuchsia dye powder. Those new rovings turned out absolutely stunning and we were all thrilled. That still left me with 8 oz of merino rovings that I really didn't want to sell as "seconds" in my etsy store. So, I went through my stash of fibers and found some custom dyed mohair roving and tussah silk in coordinating colors and I blended all those fibers together on my hand crank drum carder to make these gorgeous Custom Fiber Blend batts for spinning, felting and fiber art. I emailed some photos to the Canadian customer, just so she knew that those original rovings hadn't gone to waste. She emailed me back saying "Those are soooo beautiful Brenda! Nice lemonade ; - ) Well done!" I have always said there are never dyeing mistakes, only fiber art you didn't plan on.
These Custom Fiber Blend batts are available in my Etsy store. I made and listed two batts, each weighing 2 oz and I have enough fibers left that I can make at least 4 more batts just like these.
13 comments:
So beautiful, bright and cheerful -- love the colors!
Wow, so pretty, like a sunset over an ocean :)
Those colors are so fun and summery! Beautiful!
those really turned out great! you do have a talent for turning something that would have been not "it" into something that is WOW! great job!
Pour me another glass of lemonade please! WEll done. Someone else might have been discouraged...love the way it turned out.
Sandy
That is what "art" is--good mistakes! Lovely colors. ;)
The colors are so colorful and vibrant! I absolutely adore this roving dye job. Too bad the first time turned a bit murky!! Ohh, the risks of doing things by hand ;) It can go horribly wrong, or amazingly right.
Just beautiful!! In fact, I photographed a sunset tonight with some of those very colors!! The concept of having a matching scarf...ha ha....
That is just gorgeous! Love the colors.
Absolutely beautiful colors! The possibilities are endless with such a beautiful yarn.
sewingmom
I love those colours! Really WOW!
You have a nice blog, I really like to read it.
Greetings from Maks
www.maksitaksi.blogspot.com
That's a perfect example of how making mistakes can set your work off in new directions you never would have otherwise thought of. It's great to hear someone share a story about this; I think so many artists are afraid to share their fails when really the point of a 'fail' is to spark new ideas. Connects to life too...art is the greatest resiliency teacher I think.
Thank you everyone for the great comments. I'm glad you all like my lemonade. It was a great lesson in resiliency and thinking outside the box. I was so disappointed in those rovings when I first saw them. Then when I discovered the coordinating fibers in my stash the wheels started turning and I decided to see what it would look like blended. I was thrilled with the outcome.
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