Dyeing 100: Intro to Dyeing with Fiber Reactive Dyes

Join me online and learn how to dye cotton fabrics with fiber reactive dyes

This class will teach you how to use fiber reactive dyes to color cotton  using low water immersion (LWI) methods. Dyeing fabric using LWI gives you an uneven flow of color that provides incredible visual texture. It is a self-paced online course  with access that never expires, so you can return to the materials whenever you like!

Course Content

Session 1: Supplies, Tools and Space

We begin by covering what you’ll need to complete everything in this course. The few specialized supplies needed are easily available to order online and the bulk of what you will use are easily purchased locally, or better yet, scavenged from your recycling bin (and perhaps those of your friends as well!). We will also cover how to find a place to do your dyeing safely.

Session 2: Primary tints 

This session takes you through the basics of using Procion MX Dyes in a low water immersion process and allows you to quickly create  some lovely gradations of three primary colors, like this:

Session 3: Mixing 2 primary colors

Next, we’ll mix our primary dyes, two at a time. You’ll see just how much effect each particular dye has, and create a lovely range of colors.

Session 4: The Color Wheel 

Dyeing a Color Wheel allows you to expand your knowledge of color theory, and stretch your understanding of color influence.

Session 5: Shading Primary Colors

Adding black to shade a color can have either a subtle or huge effect on its hue. We’ll add a range of amounts of black to our 3 primary colors and create some luscious fabric.

Session 6: Combining Complementary colors

Finally, we’ll mix complementary colors and end up with all sorts of what I call “complex” colors; very subtle changes to a hue that take it from a simple bright color to a more sophisticated hue, bringing to mind colors like “bing cherry” or “russet”, the kind of colors you find in the really BIG box of crayons!

Course Time Commitment

This is a self-paced course, meaning you can take it as quickly or slowly as you need to. I estimate that a motivated student could complete each session in about 6-8 active hours. If you wanted to, you could devote an entire weeks to following this through, beginning to end (what a creative vacation that could be!) However, most of us have lots of other things to do, so at every step along the way I will point out time sensitive steps and discuss how the work could be distributed to fit your needs.

Course Access Limit

There is none! You will always be able to return to re-view a video, see if there are questions that other students have asked that are interesting, re-download a sheet that you’ve lost on your computer.

Course Format

The content of the site includes almost 3 hours of videos, 38 pages of .PDF files (all the content except for the videos that you can download and save on your computer) plus each session has printable formula sheets allowing you to dye the session using 4 different sizes of fabric (from fat eighths to full yards) using either metric or imperial measurements, your choice! Each session will have a Question and Answer forum associated with it – I will respond to any question you have within 24 hours, and both these questions and answers will be available for other registered students to view. The beauty of an online course is that if several people are having the some difficulty with a particular step, I will just create additional content to add to the session to clarify any confusion.

Take this class if…

• You love hand dyed fabrics and would like to make them yourself.
• You love color.

Why learn from me?

By day, I teach biology to students at the University of Redlands who are non-science majors. I am very comfortable engaging my students and putting complex ideas into terms they understand. I’ve spent 15 years learning how to dye fabric, and developed this way of dyeing to accommodate my busy schedule and not waste my limited resources. I have 25 “how to” articles published in various Interweave publications (see list here), I have been a guest on four episodes of Quilting Arts TV, and I created a workshop DVD for Quilting Arts last August. A video clip from that can be found here, and is a great introduction to my teaching style.

When does it start?

Whenever you like! 🙂 This class is complete, and ready to go whenever you are! Remember, this is a self paced class with no expiration date! (Another way to look at this course is that this is a book, with videos to walk you through complex steps visually, and you can ask the writer of the book any questions you have!)

What do I need?

Dyeing does require a fair amount of supplies, but the vast majority of them are easily and cheaply obtainable, and can be satisfied a number of different ways. In the class I explain why and how to obtain these supplies, and suggest options where appropriate and point out when substitutions would not work. Here is a simple checklist for you to quickly see all the supplies for the entire course. Please feel free to email me (Candy@CandiedFabrics.com) if you have any particular questions about any of these. If you’d like to dye fat quarters of every formula I give you, you’ll end up with stacks of fabric that look like this, 25 yards in all:

Not quite sure if you’d like one of my online classes? I’ve created a sample session so you can give it a try – Click here!