I have some wool fabrics in my stash that aren’t colors I will use in my rug hooking or applique projects so I am going to overdye them to come up with a color that I can use.
I have a lot of navy wool from back in the day when it was easy to find wool garments to deconstruct. I just don’t find a lot of uses for navy so I am going to try to turn it into black wool.
I also have a large amount of bright purple wool fabric. I need some brown wool so I will try to turn the purple into brown.
Finally, I have some cream / salmon colored wool that I am going to turn into gold wool.
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Choosing Dyes:
I am going to be using Cushings powdered acid dyes. You want to make sure you are using a dye that is suitable for use on wool fabrics.
If you are new to dyeing wool, I have a step by step tutorial to get you started.
Purple to Brown Wool:
I have a lot of this purple wool, but what I really need is brown wool. In order to choose which dye color to use, I had to remember some of my elementary school art lessons. Mixing two colors on the opposite side of the color wheel produces brown.
Since yellow is opposite purple on the color wheel I am going to use a yellow dye. On the color chart, gold is a nice medium shade of yellow and I have it so that is what I will use.
Light Salmon to Gold Wool:
Since this cream / salmon wool is so light, I could probably dye it any color. I am going to try to dye it with old gold dye. I need some gold wool and I have used this color of dye before on different wools and really love how it turns out.
Navy Blue to Black Wool:
I have LOTS of navy blue wool and I just don’t ever seem to find projects in which to use it. Since it is so dark already, I think the only color I can dye it into is black. I tend to use a lot of black wool for backings of projects and other things so that will be perfect for me.
I am going to use Granite dye, which is a really dark almost black shade.
The Results of Over-dyeing wool fabrics:
I was very pleased with the results!
The brown turned out lighter than some of my other brown wools, but it is a very pretty shade that will work perfectly in my projects.
The strange salmon / cream wool is now usable as a wonderful primitive gold.
The navy wool is now black. I can’t tell you how exciting that is to me! I have so MUCH navy wool. I will definitely be dyeing some more of it into blacks.
I have some more wools that I plan on over-dyeing in the future since this went so well.
Be sure to check out my other rug hooking tutorials.
Blessings~
Amy
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