25 Skeins from One Dye Bath

For the past three days I've been absorbed in trying out Jenny Dean's method for obtaining 25 skeins from one dye bath. I chose 500 grams of weld for my dye bath, to dye 25 x 20 gram skeins of Chester yarn, aiming at a range of yellows. Last time I dyed with weld, the results were more beige than yellow, so this time I was hoping for better things.

It took me most of the first day to the up all my skeins, prep them for dyeing and do the first stage mordanting and dyeing. Five skeins were set aside with no mordant, and five were mordanted with alum, copper, iron and rhubarb leaves respectively. My weld dye bath was also prepared by drenching the weld with boiling water before leaving it all day to steep.

Once I'd prepared everything, I put all the skeins into the weld at about 8.00 p.m., and took them out an hour later.

This is what they looked like when I went to bed! There are two extra skeins of 'thick and thin', both mordanted with alum, on the top left hand plate

The next morning I took one skein of each plate, washed it out and set it to one side as an unmodified set. One skein from each plate was then modified with one of four modifiers: acid (vinegar), alkaline (soda); copper and iron, using Jenny's instructions from 'Wild Colour', a book I cannot recommend too highly. It is brilliant! The skeins took a lot of washing out afterwards, and were then hung up to dry overnight. I'm pleased with the results. It took me a couple of hours this morning just to label them.

The skeins have been arranged in groups by modifier. The top row is unmodified, except for the 'thick and thin' skein on the far right which was modified with tin, the only skein that I 'brightened'. The orange tones were all modified with soda, the green ones with copper, the brown ones with iron and the yellowish ones with vinegar. Within each set, reading from the left to the right the skeins are un-mordanted, then mordanted with alum, copper, rhubarb leaves and iron.