Magic, Drama, Excitement
a book review of Katie Jane Widger’s guide to dyeing fabrics using fiber reactive dye
dyeing manual by K. Widget
Right away I have to tell you that this book is hard to find. I’m writing this review because I feel The New Color Wheel Fabric Dyeing is among the three best dyeing books available for fiber artists who want to dye cotton and silk fabric for their art quilts.
If you can get your hands on a copy, you should treasure it and keep it in your permanent book collection. This book will inspire your fabric dyeing projects even if you have had no experience at all with any type of fiber reactive dyeing.
While some of the information may seem a bit confusing at first glance, if you carefully read and follow the instructions you will be successful. There is a lot of very useful general information about dyeing and this information is sometimes not obvious if you just quickly scan the pages. In fact, if you read and perhaps re-read the whole book before starting in on a project, you will benefit by absorbing all of Widger’s concepts. In other words, don’t rush into batch dyeing. It is a different process entirely from the small batch, baggie/scrunch type of work.
The topics of color theory, dye chemistry, equipment and supplies, preparing the dyeing products, microwave techniques, tips and troubleshooting are discussed with enough detail to help beginning dyers become comfortable enough to proceed.
Widger strongly suggests learning basic dyeing procedures through dyeing the twelve step color wheel. Actual dyed cotton swatches are attached to a color wheel in the book. The method and recipes are clearly described for different proportions of yardage, eg. quarter, half, one and two yards of fabric per dyepot. All dyeing may be done with red, yellow and blue Procion Fiber Reactive dyes available from Pro Chem and Dharma Trading Co. Alternative color choices for the formulas are also given.
Widger describes several dyeing processes and formulas: one color value gradation, color modulation in two values, and color and value gradation, mottled, variegated and tie dyeing for both cotton and silk, and sequenced overdyeing.
Fire Red and Bronze
Pagoda Red and Bronze
Khaki and Fire Red
Sequenced overdyeing is my favorite part of this book. I have used the formulas and recipes many times with total success. What this system provides is a reliable method for obtaining 25 closely related hues in a 5 step value gradation using two distinct dye colors.
I like to use the phrase double dyeing to explain what happens. Using any two colors as Controls, for example, blue and red, you can obtain an orderly range of 25 blended colors, from palest blue and red to the deeper shades of red/blue and blue/red right up to darkest purple.
What’s even more enlightening is that from this array of shades, it is possible to isolate and reproduce any one of the 25 shades following a detailed formula Widger has developed. It may look intimidating if you just glance at the formula, but with practical experience you will obtain the exact color of your choice.
The three photos above each show 5 five-step color and value sequences and the two controls for each project. You can see the control swatches for Fire Red and Bronze in the first photo, they are the clear shades laying on top of the blended, overdyed sets of swatches. In total there are usually 35 swatches of dyed cotton when finished dyeing a “double dye run”, my term for sequenced overdyeing. The third picture with the pen is lacking the Khaki control. I must have used it in a project. (I typically sort and sew the sets of swatches together, code the swatches and assign a number to the project which I then record in my dye reference notebook.)
Parade, red through yellow, red through blue
My quilt, Parade, was made with two sets of sequenced dyeing, (red through yellow and red through blue) as well as 1 color value gradation, (different blacks, each dyed in 8 step gradations).
For art quilters who want unlimited shades for applique work, for color graded strip piecing or for any other intricate value manipulation, this book will be an invaluable resource. You can easily achieve mottled or solid shade effects while at the same time creating sequenced overdyed fabric. As Widger says, dyeing your own fabrics is magical, dramatic and exciting.
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