My name is Sheryl Cox and I am the owner, dyer and designer behind Essence of Autumn Yarn. With this channel I hope to share with you something creative and inspiring that will help you create your own works of fibre art. Please join me as I take you along my own personal fibre journey and share my love of knitting, yarn dyeing, knitwear design and crochet.
Thank you so much for an excellent video. Your dye work is incredible and you are a very good movie maker as well. I hope to use fiber reactive dyes to do some linen napkins.
Beautiful as always! I always enjoy your videos, the way you explain why you dye the way you do, and the way you show all of the steps. Thank you for taking the time to make the videos.
I've dyed cotton and find heat helps reduce the "fix" time. I use an Australian dye from Tintex, which can be used to dye any fibre, just change you mordant. I also add a fair bit of salt, I've found that reduces the time to wash. Thanks for sharing. I love the shine on the bamboo. 👍👍
So beautiful. Unfortunately with the cost of water, and the drought we had this summer in Western Australia, that much washing is not an option for me. I would love to dye plant fibres for our hot climate.
Thank you for a great start to the weekend. I absolutely love your videos. I have learned a lot. I don’t think I will be dyeing any plant based fibers anytime soon. 😂. It’s beautiful but labor intensive. I think I will just buy it. And now that I know how long it takes to dye this plant based yarn , I won’t complain about the price. Have a wonderful weekend. Be blessed
I wonder what you will say when I tell you that I spin this yarn myself. And it's a lot harder than spinning wool, but there's nothing better! Especially now that I know how wonderful it is to dye. But I couldn't do it if I had a job or children.
Thank you for the wonderful video. So many people do not realize how time consuming dying the plant based fibers is, and really, how back breaking the rinsing can be. As a fellow yarn dyer, it was so nice watching your video and have you explain everything so clearly. It is so true that there are not a lot of videos on RU-vid about this type of yarn dying. If you could post the link to Amazon for the spoons you are using, it would be so appreciated. I have some of the Jacquard dyes in the smaller jars, and it is almost next impossible to get the dye out without spilling it everywhere. Again, thank you for posting such a wonderful video on dying the plant based fibers. Donna
That's the reason why I don't buy Jacquard colors. There is no reason for me to go away from Dharma. I buy these spoons when needed for soap making and cosmetics (in Germany). They are very narrow and you can get in everywhere.
Absolutely gorgeous!! I think one of the drawbacks of plantbased dyes is all the extra rinsing. You almost need a continuous water heater, but I don't know how cost-effective those are!!
Hello my dear! I spun rami, bamboo and linen years ago simply because I wanted to know what exactly these fibers are and so they have been lying there undyed for 10 years now and you come with your video as if sent by God. Wonderful, now I can buy the reactive dyes and get started. Thank you so much because I can now enchant all my beautiful spun threads.
I wonder if using a spin dryer on the first few rinses would decrease the total amount of rinsing required? Or squeezing the yarn through rollers? Seems like getting as much of the dye/void liquid in the first rounds might have a big impact!? This washing step really shows why so few indie dyers do cellulosic yarns- sooooo much time spent per skein!! You must have been absolutely wiped out after rinsing all those skeins!!
I suppose this would be a good option, but I think you run the risk of dye remaining in the drum's collection tray and making you think the wool is bleeding during subsequent spins. I have a washing machine that doesn't turn the laundry before it spins and I would try this. But first I would rinse the color out a bit so that this doesn't happen to me. Have fun with the bamboo fiber!
Wonderful!! I just got some procion dyes to color some bamboo combed top fiber. I see you are dyeing in low immersion- is that the same soda ash solution? (Your tool is called a scoopula, designed for weighing out chemicals- no wonder it’s perfect for you)
If for example I needed to use a cup of citric acid solution and had to substitute with vinegar I would just use the same amount of vinegar straight from the jug, not diluted with water.
I use a proofing oven as a heat source so the yarn and water are preheated in there before I apply the dye. I take the pans out of the oven, apply the dye and then put it back in. So no there is no heat source under the pan while I'm doing the application but the yarn and water is hot.
You can speckle cotton yarn but you need to use a dye formulated for plant based fibres. The acid dye that I'm using in the video will not work on cotton. I will have a video coming soon where I show how I do the speckle technique on bamboo yarn and the method I used will also work on cotton so stay tuned for that. If you haven't already subscribe to be notified when that video is available.
This is exactly what i was looking for! I can't wait to try tomorrow! Thank you for your brilliant tutorial- you are a natural (and super nice) teacher!! 😊
Buautiful colourways! I love The Skagen painters. For example, Peder Severin Kroyer and Marie Kroyer. The extraordinaire light over Skagen, which influenced many artists, is magical. The Kroyer couples garden paintings are also beautiful. The soft greens would make another gorgeous colourway. ❤
Thank you for posting. Your shirts turned out lovely. Really appreciate your info on the rinse out process. Did you use more muted colors on the one that appears to have some black? Hope you do some more of these.
Thank you for the compliment. Yes I used softer colours on the longer shirt that is more gray toned. I will be sharing more clothing dye videos in the near future.
I so agree. No failure is ever really a failure. It is something to learn from. We don't bat an eye about paying for music or dance or gymnastic lessons, or whatever other lessons. Why is this different? Just think of it as you are paying yourself to be your own teacher. :)
Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge and expertise. I started dyeing yarn two years ago and your videos were invaluable. It is so kind to share this information for free. I love your work.
So very clever ! You must be thrilled with your new beautiful garment. Its good you showed your journey of working out what didn’t work and also ripping back. Some people would give up at that point without realising it’s a part of being a successful maker.😊
Totally awesome! I appreciate your passion for dyeing. I have both Fiber Reactive Dyes and Washfast Acid Dyes, and have been wanting to try Ice Dyeing now! Some colors "break" with ice dyeing, which is also a very interesting adventure. ProChem has color samples of all their Fiber Reactive Dyes done with Ice Dyeing. I just may have to do this today!
Hi! love the video. Watching this again because when I have dyed my solids, there were few light spots after the yarns has dried. I would like them to be more tonal, so that means I have put in not enough acid dyes in the dye pan? It was more variegated rather then tonal.
Thank you for sharing your new adventure. I found your chanel recently and you have helped me so much as a very new yarn dyer. Your dress and jacket are beautiful, thank you :)
This is incredibly thorough! I just want to make my own creations for me. Not for sale. One of my takeaways is that I should just buy some of your yarn.
