Stephanie Hoyle’s Dyeing Workshop was preceded with clear notes in March’s Guild Newsletter explaining the uses of Procion MX Dyes and which fibres they were suitable for. Recipes were given so we could prepare our fibres ahead of the day. I found this extremely useful as it enabled me to hank up skeins, weigh out tops and label them beforehand then soak them all, starting at home.

When I arrived at Strathpeffer Community Centre the room was already laid out with three “work stations” each equipped with plastic covers for the tables, a microwave oven, a range of dyes, and containers for mixing and fixing dyes. Stephanie gave us an introductory talk, covering Health and Safety, preparing yarns, fibre etc. for dyeing, applying dye and fixing dyes then finishing the process. What was even better she gave us written notes, especially useful for people like me who can only take in a little at a time or who are hoping to do more dyeing later.

After this short talk, we were all off back to our workstations and the dyes. What fun it was to try and match colours; mixing the primary colours to give subtle and sometimes surprising shades, or just using the primary colours directly onto the fibre then letting them blend into each other. I tried three different methods: immersing fibre in the dye completely; space dyeing tops and injecting dye into a centre-pull ball of yarn. All my fibres were wool, others members tried dyeing cotton, other plant fibres and fabric.

The day passed all too quickly. I came away with all my 500gms of tops and yarns dyed and ready to rinse out once they had fully cooled. You can see the results in the pictures [the last three in the gallery below]. My next excitement will be when I spin up the tops and knit up the yarns.

Thank you Stephanie for an interesting, informative and productive day.

Mary Paren

Here are some photos from the March 2019 Procion MX dye workshop. Since the workshop I’ve dyed some more cotton and got much deeper colours. I left it in the dye for 40 hours plus. I also left it in the fixative solution, adding the dye to that. Not sure which was responsible for the deeper colours, so more experimenting needed. There was still colour left in the water, so perhaps it needed to be left even longer. These are my workshop notes which you can download.
Stephanie Hoyle