My Weekend: "Cotton & the Charkha"

By Leigh

Fiber Forum was fantastic. It was the first time I'd ever been to an actual fiber conference, and as you can imagine I enjoyed every minute of it. Unfortunately, I didn't get any photos, so you'll have to put up with a pretty much pictureless description of my weekend.

Mostly I want to share about the class I took; "Cotton & the Charkha" with Eileen Hallman. If you've ever taken a class with her, then you know what a great teacher she is. We had time for about four class sessions, so we covered a lot of territory and I learned a lot. For example:

Did you know that:

• There are approximately 35 species of cotton in the world
• Only four of these are cultivated commercially
• Most non-cultivated cottons are not white
• Many of these produce very little lint
  
• All cottons do not spin the same
• The only difference between cotton and hibiscus is gossypol
  
• The natural colors of cotton are pH sensitive
  
• A single cotton fiber is made up of only one cell

Charkha spinning wasn't as difficult as I thought. My biggest concern was that I would have difficulty drafting with my left hand. I'm a right-handed spinner, but the spindle on a charkha is on the left. Thanks to Eileen's teaching method however, left-handed long draw was a pretty easy transition for me. We used book charkhas, and this is what we learned to do:

• Set up the charkha for spinning
• Spin singles
• How to use the charkha's skein winder
• How to Navajo ply and
• Make a center pull ball directly off of the charkha spindle

I can show you the fruit of my labors....

That's my cute little mini-center-pull ball on the bottom. We also got to spin a variety of cottons, from the 31 samples in the notebook we received in class. Below are the ones I chose to try.

You can click on this one to biggify a bit. Of course, these are freshly spun and the twist is not set, but it did give me an opportunity to feel how differently they spun.

Eileen does a lot of weaving with her handspun cotton, mostly as weft from singles. Working with Bluster Bay, she has developed a clever boat shuttle that holds charkha spindles for weaving without winding! Very nifty.

As you can well imagine, a book charkha has been added to the top of my wish list, especially considering my cotton stash enhancement last year. And if I forget what I learned by then, I can get Eileen's DVD. Fortunately, she's a member of my guild, so anything I might need will be handy to get indeed!

Posted 20 April 2009 at http://leighsfiberjournal.blogspot.com

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Fiber Forum Weekend

Almost Like Christmas

By Leigh

I am the happy recipient of Peg's recent stash cleaning. This is all cotton ....

A closer look ....

Lovely natural cotton rovings from The Bellwether.

Luscious organic cotton from Mielke's Fiber Arts

"Real" poonis (as opposed to mine, click here to see how I make them) neatly wrapped in a newspaper in who knows what language.

Plus a sampling of other cotton goodies.

Interestingly, I already have a cone of that pencil roving! The bit from Peg has a label in non-American spelling,

"Cotton Pencil Roving
Colour - Solar Flame"

I got mine came from Holly Bee when I was taking weaving lessons there 8 and a half years ago. Talk about a small world!

I promise that I tried to encourage Peg to spin at least some of this herself, but I can't say that I'm not delighted that she prefers spinning other things. I'm happy to be able to look forward to more cotton spinning in the future.

Posted 6 Nov. 2008 at http://leighsfiberjournal.blogspot.com

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Spinning Cotton Lint

Cotton Spinning Finished For Now

By Leigh

I have finished spinning two more colors from my Procion MX cotton lint dye experiments. The dime in each photo reflected the flash, which is annoying, but the yarn colors are pretty accurate, so I decided I could live with the dime.

Procion MX Turquoise MX-G, med DOS

1 part Procion Red MX-8G
1 part Procion Yellow MX-8G
medium DOS

Here are all the skeins I have spun this summer:

Thirteen in all, each roughly 100 grams each. I still have more dyed cotton lint to spin, mostly from the Procion MX exhaust experiments. However, I'm ready to get back to some winter type projects such as knitting on my Shetland Sampler Cardi, and combing and spinning the Polwarth/Alpaca blend.

I've been toying with the possibility of weaving with my cotton yarns, but nothing concrete is in my mind yet. For now, they will be lovingly stored away, but be assured that an idea for them will be slowly percolating in my mind.

Posted 31 Oct. 2008 at http://leighsfiberjournal.blogspot.com

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Summery of Procion MX Dye Experiments
Spinning Cotton Lint - a how to
More On Cotton Spinning - Readers' Q & A

Cotton Lint Spinning: Purples Plus

By Leigh

© 19 Oct. 2008 at http://leighsfiberjournal.blogspot.com

Related Posts:
Spinning Cotton Lint - how to
Cotton Lint Spinning Progress
Summary of Procion MX Dye Experiments - recipes for these and more

Cotton Lint Spinning Progress

By Leigh

I wanted to give you all a quick update on my cotton lint spinning.

Click photo to biggify

Eight 100 gram skeins are spun, with at least two purples to go. The differences in the oranges and greens are subtle, but this seemed to be the best photo to catch them.

I also have several other colors, which used the printers' primaries including the pastels from my exhaust experiments. At the moment I'm mostly interested in a rainbow set of colors, though I don't have a specific project in mind for them.

On another note, I learned how to do a sort of watermark with The GIMP. Now I need your opinions. Does it distract too much from the photo????????

Posted 1 Oct. 2008 at http://leighsfiberjournal.blogspot.com

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Summary of Procion MX Dye Experiments
Spinning Cotton Lint

More on Spinning Cotton

By Leigh

There were some good questions and interesting comments on my Cotton Spinning Update post, so I thought I would expand a little on the subject.

Tina asked

Do you card it into rolags before you spin it?

Yes. Actually, I've been carding them into mini-rolags called punis (also spelled poonis). A "how to" along with a little more information about cotton lint can be found here.

Is it really soft?

It's wonderfully soft! Not silky, though it does have a little bit of luster (at least it seems to when I try to take a flash shot!) The yarn has a lovely next-to-the-skin wearable softness to it.

What are you going to make with it?

That's a good question. Since cotton is not in the least bit elastic, I am tending to not want to use it for a knitted project. I am, however, thinking about weaving a scarf. This is a bit daring for me as I rarely weave with my handspun. I will have a whole rainbow of colors when I finish spinning it all (pix of all those here). Now that the Olympics is over, I amuse myself as I spin by thinking of how to use the colors to advantage. More on that later.

Barbara asked

Along with Tina's questions I'd like to know how strong the yarn is.

The 2-ply is wonderfully strong. It will be good as both warp and weft. I did however, have some too thin spots in the singles of the first skein, which led to some breakage when I plyed it. I've pretty much corrected that, though this is one of the problems I seem to have spinning long draw.

Which leads to Patrick's question

How are you finding spinning long draw? For me, it was a pretty fast method...

I love spinning long draw for the exact reason that it is so much quicker than short draw (inch worm method). For me however, it does make a somewhat inconsistent yarn, as you can see in the close-up below.

This is partly due to preparation. The cotton lint tends to be clumpy, especially after being dyed. It also still has some bits of husk in it. Between that and the fact that my long draw spinning is somewhat slubby anyway, well, you can see the result. Many of the slubs can be individually pulled out during spinning, others I roll down. According to my Judith MacKenzie Mc Cuin video (Spinning Exotic Fibers & Novelty Yarns), these slubs even out during plying. I find though, that often they ply together which intensifies them. The same goes for the thin areas.

Even so I'm not unhappy with it. The singles average 42 WPI and the 2-ply, 22 WPI. I'm using my smallest spinning ratio (16:1), as cotton requires a lot of twist. For cotton, I keep the tension tight enough to draw in, but loose enough so that if I stop spinning, I can pull the single from bobbin without breaking it.

So to Dorothy and Jewel, I say jump on in, the water's fine. :) It takes a little practice to get it started, but cotton is lovely to spin.

And as to the last two comments.....

Kathy

I'm just speechless!

Sharon

I've never seen anything like your cotton yarns.

I'm going to take these as compliments! I'm pretty sure they are, but they are delightfully ambiguous enough to go either way. ;)

© 1 Sept. 2008 by Leigh at http://leighsfiberjournal.blogspot.com

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Cotton Spinning Update

Cotton Spinning Update

By Leigh

This is how I kept my hands busy while watching the Olympics -

Spinning cotton lint . These are from my experiments for the Online Guild's recent "Dyeing Vegetable Fibers Challenge" last June.

I'm spinning the approximately 100 gram amounts long draw. So far I've completed two reds and one orange. I'm ready to ply the second orange and then start on the yellow. That leaves me several greens, blues, and purples left to go. Progress is slow and won't be very steady, but I'm enjoying it just the same.

© 26 Aug 2008 at http://leighsfiberjournal.blogspot.com

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Spinning Cotton Lint

By Leigh

Do you find that certain fiber activities are seasonal? I feel that way about working with wool. Even though I've been semi-diligent with my Shetland Sampler Cardigan, the hot weather has finally gotten to me and I have no enthusiasm for working with wool. Not only as in yarn and knitting, but even for spinning.

However, the fruit of my cotton lint dyeing experiment is most abundant. I have a rainbow assortment of over 15 different color samples of approximately 100 grams each. What an excellent summer change of pace.

Cotton is a very short fiber,

usually 3/4 to 1 and a half inches in length. It is also fine, about 25 microns in diameter. For these reasons it has a reputation for being difficult to spin. But really, it isn't all that hard.

I make my own punis, which are slender cotton rolags. I use my Ashford cotton handcarders.

I tease the fiber out a bit and then load it on the one edge of the carder. This way it makes a narrow batt. You can load the entire carder; I just find it easier to do a neater job this way.

I use a quarter inch dowel to roll the punis with. Actually, this is my wraps-per-inch counter, the same one used in my Measuring Wraps Per Inch (WPI) post. I smooth the puni by rotating the dowel rod with one hand, using the other to press down the stray fibers.

I continue to roll the dowel and twist the puni off the other end.

This had not created an entirely smooth preparation however. I think this is partly because the Ashford cotton carders, which have a finer carding cloth than their regular carders, are still not the finest on the market. Also, the cotton lint has bits of husk and whatnot in it. I pick as much of this out as possible, but some remains behind.

I spin these with my wheel. I'm not a spindle spinner, nor do I have a charka, but a flyer wheel does nicely if adjusted properly.

To spin, I loosen my drive band (for double drive) or break band (for single drive) as much as possible. Cotton requires a lot of twist to hold it together, so I use my highest spinning ratio. A lower ratio is useful to get a feel for spinning it, but it requires a lot more treadling. It also wants to be spun into a fine yarn. I use the long draw, and the punis spin up quickly.

I haven't decided what to do with it all yet.

This should keep me busy for awhile. It may be psychological, but I certainly feel cooler working with it than with wool. Our southern summers tend to be long, but I have a lot of cotton to spin, and plenty of snoopervision .....

Posted 7 July 2008 at http://leighsfiberjournal.blogspot.com

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Summary of Procion MX Dye Experiments

By Leigh

Color. I learned to work with color as an art student, when I took painting classes. I was fortunate to have an eye for color, so that mixing it came easily to me. I could match any color almost instinctively.

Dyes are different. At first I wondered why my Procion MX starter kit came with red, blue, yellow, black, turquoise, and fuchsia. After experimenting, I've learned some things. I've already shared a little of that with you, but this post is a better record of what I've done and learned so far.

Using my unbleached cotton lint (photo top left), I started with green, using the "Shamrock" recipe I found on this Jacquard chart.

So what would happen if I mix the proportions up a bit?

OK. Not a lot of difference, still they are pretty greens. But why the turquoise? Yellow and blue make green, right? What would happen if I just mixed the dyes like paints?

Interesting. Green #3 is a nice green, not as clear looking as greens 1 and 2.

Next, purple:

Switching proportions made a big difference this time....

But why fuchsia? Why not red?

Um, yuck(?). This purple reminds me of a lighter version of the color of my home canned Muscadine grape jelly after it's aged a bit.

One problem with purple #3 is that the red (MX-GBA) is not a pure hue. According to Paula Burch's PMX dye purity chart, this red is actually a mixture. I'm not sure what colors it's made of, but my guess would be yellow. Not only because Earth Guild calls it "Warm Red," but because yellow, being the opposite (compliment) of blue, would tend to muddy the purple.

Ah, but at least the recipe for orange ("Tangerine") is familiar color mixing territory:

A subtle difference from switching the proportions. But what if I substitute fuchsia for red? What happens then?

Well..... it's pretty but it's not exactly what I would call orange!

One thing I have learned from reading Deb Menz's Color In Spinning, is that all dyes have undertones. That's what the MX codes indicate in part, the undertones. According to this article (also by Paula Burch), the code letters after the MX stand for G = gelb, German for yellow, B = blau or blue, and R = rot or red. These undertones influence the outcome, and some work together better than others.

Because of those undertones, I could go on and on, playing with the colors and proportions. But I have other things I want to explore.

So there you have it. The beginning of my experiential knowledge base. I feel like I've got a good start.

Posted 28 June 2008 at http://leighsfiberjournal.blogspot.com

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2nd Procion MX Dye Experiments - experimenting with color mixing
Procion MX Fuchsia - information about
Procion MX Turquoise - information about
Procion MX Exhaust Experiments - You tell me!

2nd Procion MX Dye Experiments

My first fiber reactive dye experiments were the primary colors from my starter kit. My next step, was to mix the secondary colors from them. Rather than experiment randomly, I tried to see if I could find any information on color mixing with Procion MX dyes. I found this chart at the Jacquard Products website. You can either view it online or download a pdf copy.

The chart is useful because it gives recipes in both kitchen measurements (teaspoons) and also parts for metric. What wasn't useful, was the use of names instead of photos to identify the colors. That meant I had to choose recipes based on names. All I wanted was orange, purple, and green, but wow there were a lot of choices.

I finally settled on the recipes for tangerine, plum, and shamrock. This is what I ended up with:

I confess that I was not exact in following the recipes, but this was because I didn't have the required colors. I substituted the colors in my started kit instead. Nor did I follow the proportions perfectly. I used teaspoon measurements, but since I am working with small amounts of fiber, I used 1/4 and 1/8 teaspoon measurements according to the parts required for the recipe. I rounded the parts to be workable with quarter and eighth teaspoons.

The basic recipe I used was to produce medium colors:

• Cotton lint (scoured): 100 grams
• Water: 3 liters
• Salt: 10 teaspoons
• Washing soda: 4 teaspoons
• Dye powders: see below

Green (adapted from the recipe for "shamrock" on the Jacquard chart):

• 2 parts Yellow MX-8G
• 2 parts Turquoise MX-G
• 1 part (scant) Blue MX-R

Purple (from "Plum" on the chart):

• 2 parts Fuchsia MX-8B
• 1 part Blue MX-R

Orange (adapted from "Tangerine")

• 2 parts Yellow MX-8G
• 1 part Red MX-GBA

Each color was left to soak in it's dyebath at least two hours.

The Procion MX color names ("warm red," "lemon yellow," "clear blue," etc.) vary according to the manufacturer, but the color codes (MX-GBA, MX-8G, MX-R, etc.) should be the same. This information, plus the purity of many of the colors can be found on a different chart at
All About Hand Dyeing. You can either view or download that chart here.

The question that comes to mind next is, what would happen if I switched the proportions in the recipes? I'll let you know!

Related Posts:
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1st Procion MX Dye Experiments - working with primaries
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1st Procion MX Dye Experiments

I've finished my first batch of procion mx dye experiments and here are the results.

The instructions that came with my dye kit were for one pound of fiber or fabric. Since I wanted to work with smaller amounts, I decided to use a recipe from Curious Weaver. Kaz has a page of tutorials and articles here. If you scroll down toward the bottom, you'll see Dyeing for Weavers - A beginners guide to fibre reactives for cellulose fibres. This is a downloadable pdf document with step by step instructions, including charts for different amounts of fibers and depths of color.

Here is what I needed for the dyeing:

The table salt levels the color and also helps the solubility and take-up of the dye. Washing soda serves as the dye activator. For the dye powders, I chose the primary colors to start. These are Lemon Yellow MX-8G, Clear Blue MX-R, & Warm Red MX GBA.

This recipe is for a medium color:

• Dye: Procion MX
• Fiber: cotton lint, scoured
• Amounts
  • Fiber: 100 grams
  • Water: 3 liters
  • Salt: 10 teaspoons
  • Washing soda: 4 teaspoons
  • Dye powder: 1/2 teaspoon.

"Anonymous" commented in a previous post about the safety of procion mx dyes. A pdf MSDS (material safety data sheet) for Procion MX dyes is available from Fibrecrafts and can be downloaded by clicking here. To see their complete list of downloadable MSDS for a variety of dyes and accessory chemicals, click here.

MSDS for the individual colors of procion mx dyes are available at the PRO Chemical & Dye website. For that list, click here. [I've added both of these links to my Dyeing Links page.]

Procion dyes are actually a family of what are known as fiber-reactive dyes. They were developed for vegetable based fibers such as cotton, hemp, jute, linen, etc. Their color is very permanent, as the color develops inside the fiber rather than on its surface. Except for turquoise, all other Procion MX colors require temperatures of 85 to 105 degrees F (depending on the set of instructions you're reading.)

The dyebaths looked like this .....

The instructions called for about an hour soaking time, with frequent stirring. The actual time I left them in the dyebath was about two hours.

After removing the cotton from the dyepots, a cold water rinse followed to rinse out all the salt. After that I washed each one in hot soapy water, rinsed, squeezed out excess water, and let dry on a towel.

The cotton was pretty clumpy when dry. These have been teased out for a photo.

I'm pretty happy with the results, though the red is lighter than I might have liked. My daughter calls it Watermelon Red.

What's next? Experimenting with some color mixing.

Related Posts:
Scouring Cotton for Dyeing
2nd Procion MX Dye Experiments - 1st color mixing experiments
Summary of Procion MX Dye Experiments - All of my color mixing experiments so far.

Scouring Cotton For Dyeing

The Online Guild's Vegetable Dyeing Challenge offered several options, including things like doing comparisons, or working with fibers and/or dyes new to you. Both the cotton and the Procion MX dyes are definitely new to me, so they are a good choice for me to work with.

Cotton lint is actually ginned cotton, i.e. the seeds have been removed. However, it still contains bits of husk and bits of stems. And even though it looks and feels clean, it is not.

The directions that came in my dyeing kit (which can be found here), did not include instructions for washing the fiber, so I used the instructions given in the challenge notes.

These called for 1/4 teaspoon of washing soda (also known as soda ash or sodium carbonate) and 1/4 teaspoon of Synthrapol per gallon of water. Since I don't have any Synthrapol, I used my old standby, Dawn dishwashing detergent.

I weighted out 8 ounces (228 grams) of cotton and put it into my dedicated dye pot along with four gallons of water. That meant I needed one teaspoon each of washing soda and Dawn.

After it had simmered for about an hour, it looked like this.

Even though the cotton hadn't looked dirty, the color of the wash water tells a different story.

After rinsing, I divided it into four plastic bags to await color. That will give me roughly two ounces of fiber per color. When I want to do more, I'll wash some more cotton.

How much of a difference did the washing make? Well, can you tell which side was washed and which one wasn't?

The best part of doing this in my little dye "studio" was being able to keep the heat and humidity outside!

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2nd Procion MX Dye Experiments

OLG Challenge: Dyeing Vegetable Fibers

By Leigh

This month's workshop for the Online Guild is a challenge for dyeing vegetable fibers. At first, I didn't think I could participate, mostly because my kitchen is way too small to share dyeing projects with cooking and food preparation. But when fellow blogger and OLG member Kathe mentioned using very small outdoor spaces for dyeing, I began to change my mind.

I was especially interested in this challenge as I've done virtually no vegetable fiber dyeing. However, I have a huge box of cotton lint which I received as payment for doing an historical spinning demonstration about eight years ago ....


.... and I have the Procion MX starter kit from Earth Guild that I bought at SAFF last October .....


So all I need is a little space, a table, a heating element, and an outlet......


The beauty of Procion MX dyes, is that they are cold water fiber reactive dyes. This means the only heating I will need to do will be to scour the raw cotton. More on that next time.

Posted 10 June 2008 at http://leighsfiberjournal.blogspot.com

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2nd Procion MX Dye Experiments
Summary of Procion MX Dye Experiments