Dye a little each day
I'm pretty certain the dyes in my shop know when Friday has come about. I always am thrown a curve ball or two on Fridays.
Today's dye job sounds fairly straight forward...tech down two white dress shirts. In other words...dye them so they aren't SO white...a cream or taupe. Not only does this prevent the shirts from glowing in a distracting manner under stage lights...but in this case it adds to the age and wear of the overall look as well.
So...dye.
A few cotton swatches went into various measuring cups of different color recipes as I tweeked amounts to create the perfect hue. Having found the happy color blend I made up the 10 gallon amount in the dye vat...and as an extra precaution I syphoned off a cup to test a swatch yet again. I wanted to be extra cautious the color was indeed correct before throwing the pricey costume pieces in. Great, fine...the color is what the coloe was supposed to be. I washed the shirt to remove and oils, dyes, fabric treatments and all those other obnoxious unknowns that can really screw with the chemistry (yes...how many costumers can say they are indeed chemists too).
And in go the shirts...
A little agitation by hand...gloved to the armpits of course...
The cotton begins to pick up the color...
And a mere minute in a can already see something going horribly awry.
The shirts are turning a beautiful uniform shade of pink.
Pink!
Why pink, I have no earthly idea. Looking at the dye bath, you'd swear the color was greyish. The swathces all yeilded a cool beige/taupe/tan/insert your version of dusky greyish brown here...But pink these shirts suddenly became. A very aggressive, center of attention diva pink. A "I know it's your Friday so I'm going to screw with you last day before freedom" sort of pink.
So out come the chemicals. The ones that create a mild odor and a eye tingling steam. Thiourea Dioxide. Sounds tast, doesn't it? A chemical for discharge dying. It essentially, through a nasty chemical reaction breaks down the dyes so they no longer bind with the fiber. So...
No more pink.
But now I start from scratch. New dye bath. In the shirt go. Out they come ten minutes later...the perfect shade.
Why didn't that happen three hours earlier when I orginially started the process. Who knows.
Today's dye job sounds fairly straight forward...tech down two white dress shirts. In other words...dye them so they aren't SO white...a cream or taupe. Not only does this prevent the shirts from glowing in a distracting manner under stage lights...but in this case it adds to the age and wear of the overall look as well.
So...dye.
A few cotton swatches went into various measuring cups of different color recipes as I tweeked amounts to create the perfect hue. Having found the happy color blend I made up the 10 gallon amount in the dye vat...and as an extra precaution I syphoned off a cup to test a swatch yet again. I wanted to be extra cautious the color was indeed correct before throwing the pricey costume pieces in. Great, fine...the color is what the coloe was supposed to be. I washed the shirt to remove and oils, dyes, fabric treatments and all those other obnoxious unknowns that can really screw with the chemistry (yes...how many costumers can say they are indeed chemists too).
And in go the shirts...
A little agitation by hand...gloved to the armpits of course...
The cotton begins to pick up the color...
And a mere minute in a can already see something going horribly awry.
The shirts are turning a beautiful uniform shade of pink.
Pink!
Why pink, I have no earthly idea. Looking at the dye bath, you'd swear the color was greyish. The swathces all yeilded a cool beige/taupe/tan/insert your version of dusky greyish brown here...But pink these shirts suddenly became. A very aggressive, center of attention diva pink. A "I know it's your Friday so I'm going to screw with you last day before freedom" sort of pink.
So out come the chemicals. The ones that create a mild odor and a eye tingling steam. Thiourea Dioxide. Sounds tast, doesn't it? A chemical for discharge dying. It essentially, through a nasty chemical reaction breaks down the dyes so they no longer bind with the fiber. So...
No more pink.
But now I start from scratch. New dye bath. In the shirt go. Out they come ten minutes later...the perfect shade.
Why didn't that happen three hours earlier when I orginially started the process. Who knows.
posted by Unknown at
8:59 PM
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