I’m putting together the palette of dyes for the Burning Man banners. I’m planning on under-dyeing the silk a light golden yellow so that my waxed lines will be a color rather than white.  It will also help tie all the colors together and add a golden “glow” to the banners.

So I started doing some tests of the under-dye saturation. When you’re going to be dyeing over 50 yards of silk fabric, you really want to get it right the first time. So I tested four pieces of fabric. Then I tested another four pieces of fabric. Then I tested another two pieces of fabric for a total of ten. Now to test the color palette I’ve picked out on each of those ten (what you see above).

My master plan is to steam the dyed banners to get the best color and most permanence. But I’ve begun to wonder if that is necessary. What if I get just fine color without steaming? Well, that would sure save a lot of time. So, I took each of those 10 color tests and did them twice–one to steam and one to just let batch. That would be 20 color tests.

Today I’ll steam one set of each. No matter what, it will be interesting, and some additional information for this dye nerd.

I sure hope at least one of them gives me the info I really need!