Dyeing to Try or Trying to Dye

I've been working to replenish my t-shirt yarn stock in my shop, not the plain colors but the funky ones.  T-shirt yarn made from tie dye t-shirts never lasts very long in there.  What's a girl to do when there's no guarantee of finding tie dye t-shirts at the thrift store?  She can try dyeing some of the seven gazillion white t-shirts filling thrift store aisles.

That was my task today.  I had some dyes on hand that were also a thrift store find and I'd already destroyed a canning pot with a dye bath a while back, so I was ready for action.  

Here are the results drying on the clothesline.

A closer peek

You can expect these to make their way into my shop on Monday.  

Overall, I'm pleased with the results.  I wasn't thrilled with the process.  Chemical dyes stink, literally and rinsing out the dye until the water runs clear wastes a ridiculous amount of water to my way of thinking.  I wound up using the washing machine to do this and I still feel like the amount of dye coming out was endless.  I still have some chemical dye left but I lean toward exploring natural dyes in the near future.  

Since I still have some of this dye batch left, I've got some gray t-shirts soaking in it.  I'm curious to see what they look like.  Every time I've made gray t-shirt yarn it just looks grungy and unappealing to me and my efforts to bleach dye gray t-shirts have been utter failures.  The gray never changes color with the bleach!  How is that even possible??

The other discovery I made was that the blade on my rotary cutter was insanely dull.  What a difference a new blade made! 

Happy weekend to all!