More dyeing adventures- oven dyeing

I have been doing lots of dyeing lately, because of this I decided to try out a new technique- oven dyeing. The presoaked yarn is put in a baking tray (a deep one) with enough water and vinegar to just cover it, then dyes are poured on and smooshed about. The tray is covered with foil and put in the oven for about 40 minutes. It is left to cool then washed and dried as usual.

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There were a couple of reasons for trying this-

• It is less messy than wrapping in cling film and steaming, I always get leaks!
• The pans and foil are reusable, whereas the cling film gets binned
• I can get two pans in the oven at a time, dyeing 200g but only 100g in the steamer pot.

There were a few problems with the method. The superwash yarn and fibres I used slurp up the dye pretty quickly, leaving you with white bits, especially on the bottom. And no one wants a white bottom!

I found that plenty of smooshing with a spoon helped, also turning the fibre/yarn over and adding half the dye to the bottom was effective if a little messy (plenty of old newspaper all round to catch the drips). If all else fails call it intentional!

The other problem I had was with the pans I bought. I initially got some solid metal trays in preference to foil ones as I was worried about the foil bending when it was full (which it does). This was ok, but I don't think they appreciated sitting overnight full of vinegery water as the fibre cooled. Rust patches started to develop, and I have been told rust can affect how the colours come out.

As a solution I am currently using foil trays sat in the now slightly rusty pans. This works quite well as there is less water to heat as the foil pans are smaller (saves energy) and the solid metal pans stop the foil bending and dye going all over the carpet. Also if the dye tray does bubble over a little it goes into the second pan rather than all over the oven.

This picture shows close up of the yarn in the dye, it looks so pretty, I think it is even better when it is wet than when it is dry, all shiny. Maybe I need to experiment with different base yarns! The grabbiness of the superwash can be seen here in the fact the blue and purple are sat next to each other with almost no bleeding.

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