Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Purple Separation


All of these colors came from a single purple dye in one pot.


I had read that purple is one of the hardest colors to get when you dye yarn, but I had never had trouble achieving this color. I know that red and blue dyes absorb at different rates, but if the dyebath has been stirred properly then you still will get a solid color.

When I was making a space dyeing tutorial, I noticed that the McCormick's NEON Purple dye appeared to have separated a bit, so I wanted to see if I could acheive this by space dyeing yarn with just purple dye.


Looking at the space dying - looked like there could be some color separation from the purple color. This is what started the investigation in the following video.



Space Dyeing Yarn - Color Separation with Purple Dyes (10 drops of dye were used in this tutorial)



Blue and red dyes absorb at different rates, so as the color dissolves around the dyebath, we get varying amounts of each color on the wool, leaving us with pinks, blues and purples instead of a single color. I think the final effect is beautiful, and plan to take advantage of this color separation more in the future.


The finished skein - I would say that the purple dye did separate into red and blue!