Piece Dyeing: It's Never Over

Piece dyeing is a way to refresh a garment, unify a textile created with many odd bits of yarn, or alter a palette of many shades in a previous over-dye experiment. It is also a way to recover from an “oops!” color combination. Frequent Spin Off contributor Martha Owen knitted a shawl using handspun leftovers and then piece-dyed it in madder and lichen.

Martha started with odd bits of handspun yarn—leftovers from long-ago projects, gifts from other spinners—including what she calls bottom-of-the-barrel combinations that were not so satisfying at the start. Her initial shawl was in shades and speckles of this and that.

Read about Martha's color-test samples using walnut, weld and marigolds, madder, and lichen on one long swatch, allowing her to see the how the same textile looked using different natural-dye methods. What follows is Martha's final shawl, which, after dyeing in madder and lichen, resulted in a beautifully cohesive rust-colored garment.

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