Yesterday's ombre dye experiment.
I'm probably not the most scientific of dyers out there--I don't always measure, I kind of just wing it, unless the project calls for more precision. This was definitely in the winging-it category. I mixed together a bunch of powder fiber reactive dyes in a bucket of water--coral pink, olive green, china red, and some "wisteria" which I think is a blue of some sort (I found some of these dyes in a closet, haven't tried them all yet), plus about half a container of iodized salt.
I stuck my fabric samples into the bucket, half-submerged, and left them for about half an hour, and then before I left for work, I pulled them about 3/4 of the way out and left them like that for about 6 hours. The result was pretty nutty when I got home--the fade from dark brown to white had crazy red/yellow in between, like fire. After washing them out, though, the white became this pretty tan color, the brown stayed pretty dark (especially where I left it for 6 hours), and the border between became this interesting pink.
Dyes are made up of a lot of different colors--even the olive green on its own has many colors inside it. It's interesting to see those colors separate out on the fabric like this. I'll sew these up into napkins or pillows and see how I like them.