Adventures in Dyeing, part I

Adventures in dyeing, part one.

I was very excited about going to our Fyber Cafe fabric Dyeing workshop at Vera's. She is our dyeing guru, mentor and retreat center. Once each summer for the last three years our textiles group has gone to her place for a dyeing workshop. I kew I wanted to try soy wax batik, like I had seen in Quilting Arts magazine, issue 35, Oct/Nov 2008. I ordered the wax from Dharma and collected supplies for stamping, in my kitchen and at the Dollar Store. I got cookie cutters, pastry wire blender, thread spools, and other tools to make marks with the wax. I searched and searched for an electric skillet. I made a mad dash one morning to all the local thrift stores and Salvation Army and Goodwill stores. No luck. :-( In the afternoon I went back to the SPCA thrift shop that had been closed in the morning, and found just what I wanted. $5, almost new, mid sized, not gigantic. It would fit two aluminum bread loaf pans with melting wax. I had intended to use Bee's wax in one, and Soy wax in the other, and to try both. However the soy wax had a much lower melting temperature, so I used that exclusively.