Painting dye on felt

[fibrenell]

Can any of you lovely experienced felters help me with dyeing my felt. I'd like to dye my felt once it's made to get a very subtle painterly effect but when and how do I do this?
Do I paint the dye on or dip dye the felt?
Do I do this when it's only prefelted or wait until it's fully felted at the end?
Which kind of dye is best this way?

Sorry so many questions but I've only ever dyed cellulose based fabrics with Procion dyes before. Any advice gratefully received.

[zed]

Hi Nell

A while ago I posted on our blog about direct dyeing onto fibres, and someone asked if the same method could be used on felt once it's made, so I tried it out.
I used regular acid dyes (Ashford ones)

This is the post about dyeing onto felt:
feltingandfiberstudio.com/2011/12/13/direct-dyeing-felt-samples/

This is the post about direct dyeing, at the bottom there is a link to a PDF tutorial about direct dyeing that has measurement charts for making up small amounts of dyes:
feltingandfiberstudio.com/2011/12/08/direct-dyeing/

and here's a little discussion we had here about it:
feltandfiberstudio.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=dyeing&action=display&thread=95


I haven't got around to doing any more experimenting yet. I wanted to try it on dry wool or soaked but almost dry wool, and on other colours than white too.

I think if you want an effect like a colour wash it'd be perfect. If you want to do something more precise, I know Ruth has used thickeners for dye, but I'm not sure how detailed you could get.

I hope that helps

[zed]

Oh, I forgot to say, I haven't tried dyeing on prefelt

[Shepherdess]

Do you have a picture of what you want to do?
For wool and all protein fibers ( silk is the exception it will dye with the cellulose dyes or the protein dyes) you need acid dyes. the acid is usually either vinegar or citric acid. mostly it depends on if you hate the smell of vinegar in the house and how available citric acid its where you are. I usually use citric acid in the house because the rest of the family complains. outside on the BBQ side burner I use vinegar, its cheap and easy to get.

[fibrenell]

Thanks for the help girls and the links which I've read.
I think I'll get some dyes from Ashford and give it a go on some white and cream prefelt that I have from Sylvia at www.silksational.com.au. It's a little loftier (thicker) than Felbi prefelt batts. I'll post some photos when I'm done.

[zed]

I'm looking forward to seeing your results

[MTRuth]

This isn't a precise process and it isn't really like painting on the item. You have to make sure the dye squishes all the way through the felt and the felt should be wet with vinegar water completely before applying dye. It's difficult to get any kind of precise pattern but gives nice mixes of colors. But if you're just experimenting, you'll see how it works and can see if that is the effect you want.