Thursday, March 13, 2008

Dye Day

gray dye pieces
After I finished working(listing books on Amazon) I decided to dye some mohair fur. Several weeks ago someone asked me about making a Schnauzer. I finally figured out how to do it. After making my pattern, I cut out, from 2 differant kinds of white mohair, the pieces. The legs and muzzle are longer fur. The body, ears, tail, and the rest of the head are shorter fur. They needed to be 2 differant shades of gray too. I mixed up the dye bath over the stove and immersed the longer fur pieces first..they need to be lighter gray. I then added more dye and put in the shorter fur pieces and timed it. The first batch(in the picture on the left) came out too dark. I'll guess I'll use those pieces on a different dog..maybe a Boston(?). I measured out half of the dye bath and then put that much plain water back in, heated it up again. I tried again with the new pieces I had cut out from the white fur. The short white fur I used is one of my favorites and I usually have a good size piece of it on hand(luckily). I'm happy with the shade they came out the second time. While I had the grey dye bath I decided to dye another piece of the longer fur so I can make a cat. Since I had my dye stuff out I did another siamese cat dye job. A busy Dye Day!

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