A Happy Customer

A friend and co-worker requested that I make a rayon chenille scarf in specific colors.  I don't usually do custom work, but I thought I would take some yarn I already had in my stash and try over-dyeing it.  The yarn I used is 1300 ypp light blue rayon chenille.

I wanted random color, so I didn't wind the warp before dyeing.  I made it into a 6 oz. skein, tied it off in four spots, and then washed it.

After washing, I soaked it in water and soda ash for about half an hour, while I mixed my dye.  I used Dylon fabric dye for all the colors- a couple purples, pink, turquoise, a couple greens and a blue.

I used a mix of the blue and purples to dye another skein (about 3 oz.) for the weft.  The color ended up sort of variegated, but in a subtle way.

The soaked and squeezed out skeins were arranged in a circle in a couple plastic dish pans. Dye was drawn up into a hypodermic syringe, and squirted into the yarn in short sections.  I wrapped the skeins in plastic, and put it in the oven with the light on (heat off) overnight.  By the time I got home from work the next night, the yarn was ready to rinse in cold water.  After rinsing most of the stray dye out, I washed the yarn with Dawn dish soap to remove more stray dye.

The skeins were put in the washing machine to spin out as much moisture as possible, and were then air dried over a heat register before measuring into warp and wound onto bobbins.

If I was going to dye more skeins, I would dye about 7-8 oz., so the scarf could be longer, and would make the weft skein about 4 oz.

Heather was very happy modeling her new scarf!