Lanaset | Tien Chiu's Blog

September 13, 2010 by Tien Chiu

More color matching attempts

I only squeezed in one dyebath this weekend, but it was instructive. I managed to match one more color from the color wheel (only two left to go), and got one more near-match for the beige:

On the right is the first attempt; on the left is the second attempt, the color I’m trying to match is in the center.

Karren told us that value (lightness/darkness of the color) is the first thing we should try to match. So I tried a couple different DOS (depth of shade – the ratio of dye to fiber), and came up with one (the left-hand sample) that matched pretty well at 0.6% DOS.

The next thing to match is hue – the basic color. One of mine is too yellow, the other too red. Somewhere in the middle is the right hue. Since the too-yellow sample has a ratio of about 5:1 yellow: red and the closest too-red sample has a ratio of about 2.3:1, for my next batch of skeins I’m going to try a sampling of all the ratios in between.

Finally, once you have the hue down, you match the chroma (relative brightness or “pure-ness” of the color). Of the samples I’ve wound onto cards, 17-25% Royal Blue added to the yellow-red mix seems to produce the right chroma, about 3 on the Munsell scale. So I am using percentages of Royal Blue in that range.

Here are the next ten skeins I plan to dye:

DOS	Mustard	Royal Blue	Deep Red	Ratio of Mustard to Deep Red
Sample
0.6%	62%	25%	13%	4.7692
0.6%	60%	25%	15%	4
0.6%	57%	25%	18%	3.1667
0.6%	55%	25%	20%	2.75
0.7%	60%	25%	15%	4
0.7%	57%	25%	18%	3.17
0.7%	55%	25%	20%	2.75
0.6%	65%	20%	15%	4.3333
0.6%	63%	20%	17%	3.7059
0.6%	60%	20%	20%	3
0.7%	65%	20%	15%	4.3333
0.7%	62%	20%	18%	3.4444
0.7%	60%	20%	20%	3

The three variables I’m playing with are depth of shade, ratio of gold to red, and the percentage of blue. (The blue is in there to dull the color, being the complement of gold + red=orange.)

I’ve decided to switch over to percentage of total dye for my notation, as I’m finding it easier to think through when working with three colors.

It’s going to take me probably another 2-3 iterations to duplicate this color, but I can sense I’m getting closer!

September 2, 2010 by Tien Chiu

Color wheel, attempt 3

I finished the next set of attempts for the color wheel. Here are the photos and my notes (note that the photo is very untrue to color, for reasons noted below – it’s more to give a general idea of what’s going on than an actual sense for the matches):

3rd attempt at dyeing a color wheel using Lanaset dyes

I am still finding it difficult to assess near-matches because of the glossiness of the silk and the way the hue-value-chroma changes (often radically) depending on the angle of the light. I am trying to do the matching at approximately the same time of day (7:30am or so) in the same place, viewing a flat horizontal surface from above. But it is still difficult. I look at the photo above – green does not look like a match at all because the light is coming from a slightly oblique angle, but viewed from straight above it matches perfectly. And so on.

I also decided to remove the color chips and place them on the card. The edge of the card has shadows that make assessing the match more difficult.

Here are my notes from the comparison (click to get the larger image so you can actually read it!)

The last assignment is to pick a color, any color, and try to reproduce it. I will pick a (relatively) neutral color since that is more challenging, and I want to do the hard stuff within the context of the study group while I can still get the thoughts of Karren and the other study group members. (And, you learn more by diving into the hard stuff first!)

Regarding my taquete puzzle, I did what I should have done at the beginning and called Sharon, my sewing mentor, to ask her about lining a shawl. It turns out it’s quite do-able – all you have to do is do an invisible, loosely-sewn tack about once every 10-12″ within the shawl, to keep the layers together. So it’s full steam ahead! I have purchased several thousand yards of rayon embroidery thread to do the weaving, and it won’t be here for several days, so I’m going to use the interim time to (a) further refine the peacock feather pattern, and (b) maybe weave up some butterflies. For some reason, I really like the idea of weaving butterflies!

August 23, 2010 by Tien Chiu

Dye days of August

I spent virtually the entire weekend working with Cibacron F fiber-reactive dyes on silk, dyeing all the “pure” colors at four intensities. Since it takes 2-2.5 hours to do a single dyebath, and I could only do three colors at a time, this meant a LONG time over the dyepots. But I am nearly done! Only one color left, and I am waiting for instructions on it, so it will probably be another day or two before I dye it.

Here is a photo of the (very meager-looking) fruits of my labors:

Cibacron F / Sabracron F "pure" colors, dyed in different intensities

Doesn’t look like much, does it? But it will be positively invaluable when it comes time to mix the colors.

Here is a photo of a single set for one color:

four intensities of Cibacron F / Sabracron F dye on silk

These are dyed (on Karren’s recommendation) at 4%, 2%, 1%, and 0.25% DOS (depth of shade), meaning the amount of dye is 4%, 2%, etc. the weight of the fiber. As you can see, 4% produces an intensely saturated color, while 0.25% produces pastels.

A word about the handles. They are the temporary wristbands that you see at athletic events, made of Tyvek and hence resistant to both heat and dye. (Google “Tyvek event wristband” and you’ll find them.) They’re cheap, make a convenient handle, and you can write on them! So I weigh the skeins, put a Tyvek “handle” on them, write the weight of the skein on the handle, and then scour/soak them. Later, once the skein comes out of the dyebath, I write the name of the dye and the DOS on the handle with a ball-point pen. (I could write it before dyeing it – which would be better for obvious reasons – but I would need to use a permanent marker. However, it’s usually not that hard to tell the different intensities and colors apart. When I start doing samples for color-matching, I will probably write the information on the handles before dyeing.)

The Tyvek bands will stand up to about 180 Fahrenheit before the glue melts, so you can easily do a dyebath with them. Don’t boil it, though!

I’ve been discovering some interesting things about Cibacron F (fiber-reactive) vs. Lanaset (acid dye) along the way. Cibacron F has remarkably high-chroma (“bright”) colors compared to Lanaset – some of the Cibacron F colors are practically “dayglo” bright. Lanaset is more muted by comparison.

Cibacron F (and fiber-reactives generally, I think) is also more of a pain to dye. From my point of view, this is because the dye, salt, and soda ash all need to be added separately. So the Cibacron F process looks like this:

0 minutes: add dye, water, and skeins to dyebath. Keep dyebath at 60C throughout.
15 minutes: add salt, circulate skeins around for more even dyeing
30 minutes: circulate skeins
45 minutes: add soda ash, circulate skeins
60 minutes: circulate skeins
75 minutes: circulate skeins
90 minutes: remove skeins from dyebath, rinse/soak for 10 minutes in very hot tap water
100 minutes: neutralize skeins in very hot tap water + a little vinegar for 5-10 minutes
110 minutes: simmer skeins at 80-85C in hot soapy water
120 minutes: rinse skeins with a final vinegar dyebath (because this is silk and you want the pH at the end to be slightly acidic)
125 minutes: rinse skeins in a final hot water rinse

(These are an adaptation of the Ciba instructions on how to do the dyebath, incidentally, courtesy of Karren Brito (our study group leader) who was kind enough to share them with us.)

This doesn’t actually sound too awful until you realize that I’m dyeing twelve skeins at once, and that each item added needs to be carefully measured down to the 1/10 of a milliliter (which is about two or three drops). Because Cibacron F is a fiber-reactive dye and hence reacts with water, the amount of water in the dyebath is an important factor. So I have tables and tables (spreadsheet-generated) of how many milliliters of water, salt solution, and soda ash solution to use for which weight of skein. This makes the entire process very fussy, and the only reason I’m putting up with it is the beautiful clear colors.

By way of contrast, here is the Lanaset dye process:

0 minutes: add skeins to dyebath (carefully pH balanced to 5.0 using acetic acid (vinegar) and sodium acetate, plus 2 g/L of Glauber’s salt as a leveling agent). Temperature 40 C.
10 minutes: remove skeins, add dye to dyebath, put skeins back in dyebath and circulate skeins for more even dyeing. Maintain temperature at 40 C.
20 minutes: circulate skeins, increase temperature to 50 C.
30 minutes: circulate skeins, increase temperature to 60 C.
40 minutes: circulate skeins, increase temperature to 85 C.
50 minutes: circulate skeins.
60 minutes: remove from dyepot and rinse once or twice with warm tap water.

As you can see, it’s a much shorter process! (I should add that I have modified it somewhat from the recommended process, which has a “hold” time of 45 minutes at 85C instead of 20 minutes. This is the result of some experimentation – I won’t bore you with the details, but basically I leave out one leveling agent because it doesn’t seem to work with my water, and that means the dye strikes faster.)

Anyway, that is probably far more information than you wanted to know about acid and fiber-reactive dyeing, but it is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to everything I have learned in this study group! I hope Karren decides to offer it as a regular class, because it has been incredibly educational for me. I had worked a lot with both fiber-reactive and acid dyes before this study group, but never had access to the detailed information that Karren has been giving us, or tried the kind of rigorous measurement that Karren has us doing. It’s a wonderful study group.

If you are interested in more detailed information on my dye process, drop me a line (my email is in the “About Me” section of my website) or leave me a comment, and I’ll be happy to share. The only reason I’m not including it here is that it is really too long to detail entirely in a blog post!