Cerulean Experiment

Since the first of the year, I have burned through pounds and pounds of cotton thread.

Here are the spent cones I accumulated in the last six months.

One of these cones is not like the others, as it had approximately 800 yards of 10/2 unmercerized cotton left on it. 

As these cones were originally described as "dye cones" from the seller, I thought I would try dyeing what was left. The dye cones are not solid and have openings along the inside. 

I scoured the thread in scalding hot water with synthropol, did my best to rinse it out, then immersed it is soda ash and water (1 cup soda ash to 1 gallon of hot water when you mixed it). 

Thereafter, I pulled it out and inserted it into a spent plastic candy container with 20 ounces of Cerulean blue dye. 

The choice of dye colors was easy. I had twice as much of the Cerulean than I had of any other color...

The original plan was to leave this for 24 hours; however, after about 12 hours, someone commented in my Instagram feed she wondered what would happen if I only dyed half of it, which gave me the idea to dye the second half for a shorter period of time. So, I flipped it early. I left the flipped side in the dye for only 4 hours to achieve some kind of variegation, or so I hoped. 

Initially, it seemed to have worked. 

However, I had a devil of a time trying to rinse the unused dye off the cone. 

In fact, everything the cone touched left blue behind. 

Undeterred, I decided to wind it into a hank to be able to rinse it more thoroughly. 

Not surprisingly, the dye did not seep completely through the cone; however, it left a lovely mottled gradient behind. 

To ensure the gradient translated into woven fabric, I wound the entire cake and used the pirns in reverse order, i.e., the last wound was woven first...

There was enough for two full-sized tea towels 24" wide and 36" long!

Here they are off the loom and awaiting finishing:

Oh! I am so pleased with them!

However, I do not believe I will be dyeing on the cone again. LOL

Instead, I will make a hank of thread and use the leftover Cerulean dye in the candy container to dip dye, leaving each section varying lengths of time. It will not result in the same type of gradient effect as the cone dyeing, but I hope I will leave far less blue dye attached to everything around here. 

In fact, I guess, I could even make several smaller hanks and submerge each one for a different time period to create a similar gradient...