My fabric dye disaster at the Portland studio

I was trying to dye a silk dress a deep emerald green for a client's order. The dye bath looked perfect, but when I pulled the dress out after 45 minutes, it had these awful, splotchy purple streaks all through it. I think the water in their old building had some mineral issue I didn't account for. I had to stay up all night hand-painting the whole thing with fabric markers to even it out. Has anyone else had a dye job go totally wrong because of the water where you work?

3 comments

3 Comments

lee1821d ago

Oh man, that sounds like a nightmare! Purple streaks from a green dye bath is wild. Did you test the water's pH or hardness before you started? I've heard some old pipes can really throw off the chemical balance.

nancy32621d ago

Could be the fabric type, @lee18.

ryan_black21d ago

Forty five minutes is a long time for a silk dress to be in a dye bath with bad water. That's the part that really gets me. The minerals in the water must have had a full-on chemical reaction with the dye the whole time. I can't believe it turned purple instead of just a weird green. That had to be some seriously hard or weird pH water in that old building.

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