The Process 003: Dyeing Cotton Lint the Best Way

So it happened. I dyed cotton lint and it actually came out the intended color. Some other folks, including yours truly, have tried and failed to get decent color out of dying raw cotton, and then told ourselves that it was still pretty enough. I pretty much followed the same steps as I did before in the cold-batch direct application method, only using less dye. To recap, here's how you prepare:

Intructions

1. Don't even bother washing your fibers unless they are really dirty, and in that case, I don't know how to help you without creating tangles. Yes, the fibers are coated in a natural waxy cuticle, but it just doesn't seem to matter whether you wash that off or not.
2. Carelessly comb your fibers into loose logs or card into loose rolags. Loosely, so that you have an easier time getting the fibers saturated in dye. The rest of these instructions assume you have one ounce of fiber prepared in this way.
3. Put your safety gear on, including but not limited to goggles, gloves, and face mask.
4. In a container that is easy to pour from, dissolve 1 1/2 teaspoons of urea in a 1/2 cup of water.
5. Measure 1/2 teaspoon of dye into a small dish. (With the exception of dyes marked * or ** Scroll to the results section for an explanation.)
6. Add a little bit of the urea-water to the dye and use a palette knife to paste up.
7. Add the paste-up to the urea water and stir until complete dissolved.
8. Dissolve 1/2 teaspoon of soda ash to the dye mixture.
9. Pour the mixture into a quart-sized resealable bag.
10. Stuff some of that cotton in there.
11. Overcome your emotions, such as doubt, regret, and fear. You will make it all fit. Try prodding it and squishing it with your gloved hands as you go.
12. Seal the bag while carefully squeezing out the air.
13. Massage the bag gently without ripping the bags. Make sure you penetrate all fibers. You can check by opening the bags, but be prepared for a mess.
14. If your dye has turquoise in it, put the bag in a pot of warm-hot water to bring out the greener hues.
15. Let those bags sit overnight.
16. Rinse fibers until water runs clear. Please consider methods to save water. I actually took a shower with my fibers in a wash basin. After the first rinse to get the bulk of the excess dye out, I let the fibers soak with some professional textile detergent for about a day before doing a final rinse.

Let the fiber dry. Once that's done you could probably just spin directly from what you've got, but I'm going to re-comb everything again.

The above graphic might give you a little insight into my process and what sort of supplies you will need to gather. Speaking of which:

Supplies

Consumables:

• Cotton lint, either still in the boll, on the seed, or ginned. No sense in buying it already combed since you are going to make a mess of it.
• Fiber reactive dye
• Soda ash
• Urea
• Professional textile detergent (optional)

You'll notice that the minimum amounts offered are not only cheap, but more than enough to complete this project, so I don't know why people even bother with the sub-par dyes available at craft and grocery stores for what is going to end up being a pretty labor intensive endeavor. It's worth it. Get good quality materials.

Non-consumables:

It should go without saying that these materials should be dedicated to art and never used again for food.

• Pourable container: Should be able to hold at least one cup for this particular project, but maybe more if you're planning to do larger batches. Glass is best because it's super easy to clean, but plastic is okay.
• A small dish: This is to paste up the dye. My little orange dish is silicon. It was okay. As you can see, there was a lot of waste. I think next time I'll try to get a hold of some watch glasses.
• Teaspoon set
• Palette knife: Two or more would be nice. They are great for leveling your teaspoon and for making your paste-up.
• Sealable plastic freezer bags: Don't go cheap. These need to withstand a certain amount of abuse otherwise you'll have a mess on your hands, floor, and every other surface. I find the quart size to be most manageable. If you are making larger batches you can either use a gallon size, or separate into multiple bags. These can be rinsed and reused until they fall apart.
• Plastic bucket: Just to stabilize the bag while pouring the ingredients and cotton. Quart size for a quart-sized bag, gallon for gallon.
• Metal sieve: to rinse your dyed cotton.
• Tub: To soak your dyed cotton.
• Safety gear: Goggles, face mask, gloves.
• Cleanup supplies: I have one big cellulose sponge and then several sheet sponges (seen in yellow in the above photo.) I like to set my materials on the sheet sponges so any drips get absorbed instead of dripping onto the counter. (Which I failed to do in the third photo.)

Results

Here comes the payoff!

What you see above includes three dried and combed examples from my latest experiment and one from the lightest result of my previous experiment. The dye I used was Dharma Trading's fiber reactive Jade Green (50). In the bottom photograph, I placed the fibers against the Jade Green swatch for comparison. From these photos it seems clear that the far left example is the closest match, but I'll add that in person, that batch looks washed out (and that may be what you want). The most vibrant and closely matched to the swatch is actually the second from the left, though in the photograph it doesn't look much different from the second to the right sample. All I can say is, look in the highlights and not the shadows, otherwise they all seem too dark.

Speaking of too dark, ha ha, check out the far right. Holy moly, what a waste of dye that was!

Jade Green
¼ tsp dye per ½ cup of water 1:96 ratio	½ tsp dye per ½ cup of water 1:48 ratio	¾ tsp dye per ½ cup of water 1:32 ratio	1 tsp dye per ½ cup of water 1:24 ratio

In conclusion, I will be using a 1:48 dye to water ratio (1/2 teaspoon of dye for every 1/2 cup of water) in most further projects. It gives the closest match to the swatch. It should be noted that not all of the colors require the same amount of dye. If you're buying from Dharma, colors marked with * require double the amount of dye and those marked ** require four times as much dye. If I did another batch of Cobalt Blue, that means instead of a half teaspoon, I'd use a whole teaspoon.

Quick Tips 001: Color Swatch Keyring

I have this really rad poster of all of the current Procion fiber reactive dye colors, and it has been really helpful in making color choices for my projects, but it's not exactly easy to see what colors complement each other. In the following example, I'll show you how I solved this problem by turning my poster into a set of swatches.

First, I suggest that whatever poster you're using, you buy two of them. One of the posters you will keep intact, and the other you can make into swatches. Sometimes it's nice to have your colors still displayed as a poster.

At Dharma's they have these two posters available:

Fiber Reactive Dyes
Acid Dyes

Depending on your craft, whether you use glazes, paints, or dyes, often times you can even find free brochures that have color swatches printed on them.

The first thing I do to my poster is have it laminated to enhance the durability of the swatches. If you don't have access to a laminator or it's too expensive to have done, I have some other tips for you which you can do later.

I then draw lines across the poster in between the swatches. I measure carefully to make sure the lines are evenly spaces so that my swatches will be the same size.

For my project, my swatches were 1 ^3/8" tall and 1 ^5/8" wide.

 Next I cut the poster into long strips following the lines I drew.

 I finally cut the strips into individual swatches.

 *I you haven't laminated your poster yet, now might be the time to do it. You might be able to fit trimmed-down strips or individual swatches into a smaller laminator. The benefit is that all sides of your swatches will be sealed, making them a little more water proof. The drawback is that you have to cut them out again! If you're looking for a cheap hack, use packing tape. Unroll a length of packing tape sticky-side up, and place your swatches on the tape. Unroll another length of tape and carefully apply to the other side of your swatches. Now you can cut them up again!*

 To keep all the swatches organized, I decided I wanted to keep them on a keyring. I punched a hole in the corner, not less that 1/4" from the edge.

I used the first swatch as a template for marking the location of the holes on the remaining swatches so that they would sit evenly on the keyring.

 After all the punching, I discovered a secret. The hole makes a nice window to see how colors look together! 

Don't attempt to secure your swatches with a traditional spiral keyring; you'll damage the holes! Either use a threaded key ring, a hinged key ring, or a small decorative carabiner like I did.

 Now you have all of your swatches protected, organized, and ready to play with!

The Process: 002 Dyeing Cotton Lint (Cold-Hearted Batch)

I was disappointed with the results from both tub-dyeing and direct application, so I tried something similar to the method I used when I brushed fiber reactive dye directly onto fabric, only leaving out a thickener since I won't be applying the dye as one would apply paint. I was pretty happy with my results from my painting, but unfortunately I don't have any photos. The process involves making a batch of chemical water, which includes urea and sodium alginate. The urea helps dissolve the dye, thereby increasing your yield, and it also keeps it wet, which is necessary for the reaction between the fiber and the dye. The alginate is the thickener, so I left that out. The sketchy part is once you add the dye to the chemical water, you also add the soda ash. This means you need to use the dye within the hour. While soda ash raises the pH, which makes it easier for dye particles to react with the fiber, soda ash also reacts with the dye itself, making it inert. That made painting very nerve wracking. There's no fussing about and no carrying on a painting for longer than an evening. However, I'll be applying the dye to my cotton almost immediately so hopefully the time limit won't matter. Since I had such good results with my painting, I'm feeling a little more optimistic here.

The reason I'm changing the way I'm doing this is because in my previous trials, the cotton was still saturated with liquid by the time I applied the dye, which I suspect caused the pale colors. I'm also unhappy with the state of the cotton after the process was over. Though I was careful, a lot of the cotton is moderately ropey now. It's not unusable, but will definitely be a pain to process into something spinnable. Also, during the process, the clumps of cotton developed air bubbles which may have also affected the availability of the fibers to the dye.

3 ounces of roughly combed cotton

To address these issues, I combed my cotton into foot-long roving like logs. You would probably card them into loose rolags. Nobody I know of hand-combs cotton. Just me, because that's what I have. Combs. Anyway, my idea was that in organizing the fibers ahead of time the cotton will be easier to handle during and after the dying process, and hopefully will make the fibers more available to the dye.

It was a huge pain in the ass, and I kept having to remind myself to do a shitty job since I wasn't going to be spinning yet. I just needed enough effort to roughly organize the fibers. Look at all of that, and it's only 3 ounces! I've got about a pound more to do in the future.

Washed cotton logs drying in the sun

Wearing exam gloves, I washed each log individually with PTD, and then rinsed them in a wire strainer. Then I let the suckers dry. Actually, I ran the hair dryer on them for awhile, but damn it, I had already spent enough time with these guys, so eventually I just crossed my fingers that they wouldn't blow away or get stolen for nesting material, and put them outside in the sun. I took a bike ride to the cafe and had some espresso. That was more fun than running the hairdryer.

Once the cotton was completely dry again, I was ready to dye. My idea was to use the recommended amount of dye per volume of water for one batch, and then increase the proportion of dye in two more batches. I planned to do this for two different colors, 22 Cobalt Blue, which requires twice the amount of dye as most of the dyes, and 50 Jade Green, which requires the standard amount of dye, but because it has a tiny amount of copper in it, it does better when exposed to heat. What's this now? What happened to Deep Orange? Honestly, I do not need any more orange fluff. Changing colors certainly makes this experiment harder to compare to previous methods, but as long as the outcome is intense, as opposed to pastel, I will be happy. Anyway the following table is the result of a lot of math:

	Cobalt Blue	Jade Green
Recommended Amount of Dye	2 tsp dye per ½ cup of water 1:12 ratio	1 tsp dye per ½ cup of water 1:24 ratio
Recommended + ½	3 tsp dye per ½ cup of water 1:8 ratio	1 ½  tsp dye per ½ cup of water 1:16 ratio
2x Recommended	4 tsp dye per ½ cup of water 1:6 ratio	2 tsp dye per ½ cup of water 1:12 ratio

The dye powder measured into scrap paper weigh-boats ahead of time
(Protective mask, eyewear and gloves used of course)

I mixed 3 tablespoons of urea into 3 cups of warmed distilled water to make my chemical water. I used a little bit of this water to paste-up my dye. In a separate cup I poured in nearly a half cup of the chemical water and dissolved a half teaspoon of soda ash into that before pouring it into the dye paste-up. I'd add more chemical water if I didn't quite make it to a whole half cup.

Pasting-up in progress

Golly, for some reason, I thought it would be a good idea to lay out my cotton on plastic wrap and squirt the dye onto it from there. It was not a good idea. My execution left a lot to be desired. First of all, I was shocked when the dye just beaded on the surface of the cotton and then rolled off. Then I was horrified when the dye started to puddle and flow towards the end of the plastic wrap. Look at this stuff. Do you want that spilling onto your countertops and dripping onto the floor? If I made my coffee that black I'd be up for days. Anyway, I resorted to massaging the logs of cotton to encourage them to absorb the dye, which they eventually did. You know, cotton fibers are actually made of layers of cellulose arranged in a particular fashion, with a final waxy coating. I was under the impression that the wax was removed during the process of scouring and washing. So imagine the pit in my stomach upon the realization that the wax was obviously still there, repelling the water. Would it even take the dye? Well, it was too late to turn back now. So I massaged away and then awkwardly wrapped everything up in the plastic wrap.  Time for Plan B.

Ha ha ha look at this slippery blue turd ensconced in plastic wrap. Such a terribad idea

Moving forward, I decided to use sealable bags instead. I put about a half ounce of cotton in each bag. I would then mix up my dye as before, then pour it directly into the bag with the cotton. I sealed the bag and massaged the heck out of that cotton. Once I was satisfied the the dye had been throughly absorbed, I squeezed out as much air as possible and made the final seal.

Eventually, the cotton accepts the dye and the volume decreases.

Rinsing

Meanwhile, I warmed up a pot of water on the stove. I took the pot off the heat and put the bags of Jade Green cotton in the hot water bath. The Cobalt Blue bags were unceremoniously dumped in a plastic basin. My plan was to leave all of this stuff outside for 24 hours, but I got a little, um, distracted by someone special and I didn't get to rinsing until 10 hours later than what I had planned. I took the cotton out of the bag and rinsed and rinsed and rinsed and, oh my gawd, blue dye is still coming out and the cotton is still BLACK. You can see the rinse water in the photo. Every bag was like this. My conclusion is that I really went overkill on the dye and don't need that much at all. Also check out the holidays. I need to work on my masseuse skills. Once I was satisfied with the clarity of the rinse water (in all honesty I was just bored waiting) I put it all in plastic basins outside, filled them with water from the hose and let it sit overnight. The next morning the soak water was freakin' dark with excess dye. After one more rinse and a squeeze, look at what I've got.

Conclusions and Results

Cobalt Blue post-soak

Jade Green post-soak

Well, that's certainly more intense than my previous results.  You'll notice there are holidays where the dye didn't penetrate despite my massaging. I did a little combing and compared the different dye batches, avoiding the holidays. I'll still use the undyed fiber, but I really want to focus on the color of the fibers that did get exposed to the dye.

From right to left: Cobalt Blue at 1:6, 1:8, and 1:12 dye to water ratio and Jade Green at 1:12, 1:16, and 1:24 dye to water ratio. The leftmost log for each color represents the recommended ratio.

That's nice and all, but is this what these colors are supposed to look like? Not really. The color came out way darker than the color swatch indicated. Swatch 22 to the left there is for Cobalt Blue, and as you can see, the fibers, even at the very tip of my combed log, are way darker than the swatch. Though my camera is crap at showing it, I'm much closer to 130 Strong Navy. Swatch 50 indicates Jade Green, but the actual fibers are much closer to 153 Mermaid's Dream and 146 Kingfisher Blue.

So freakin' what you say, but here's my objection. If I wanted those colors, I would have just used those dyes. When I did the final rinse, there was way too much dye going down the drain. What a waste of both dye and water. Because of my fuzzy navel experience I went overkill. Don't get me wrong though, I appreciate the level of color saturation for sure, and I'm much encouraged. So, moving forward, here's my plans for next time:

• Combing the cotton ahead of time was a great idea, though tedious. The fiber didn't tangle during the dyeing process, and after all was said and done, it wasn't that difficult to re-comb it. Next time though, I will make the logs smaller (say, less than a foot long) and less thick (less than three layers of combed cotton) in order to reduce the amount of holidays during dyeing.
• In no way did I need as much dye as I used. It produced unexpected results and way too much wasted water and excess dye that gets washed out. Next time I will try another experiment, probably with the Jade Green again, because it's such a lovely color. I will try three more batches 3/4 tsp, 1/2 tsp, and 3/8 tsp of dye per 1/2 cup of water. (1:32, 1:48, 1:64 water to dye ratio.) It should be interesting to see which one of those hits the target color.
• I'm debating whether or not I really need to wash with PTD ahead of time or not.
• A 1:1 ratio of cups of water to ounces of fiber seemed to work well, despite the holidays in this round. With enough massaging, and making thinner logs of fiber, I think there's plenty of fluid to saturate the fibers.
• It seems to me adding the soda ash to the dye rather than pre-soaking the fiber in a soda ash solution was key in producing the saturation seen in my samples. It's really the only meaningful difference between this experiment and the tie dye-like direct application method I used. That time I let the fibers sit for over 24 hours as well. While I'm sure letting it sit and develop os important, I think what's more important is to not have fiber that is already wet, thereby diluting the dye.
• Since I'm not trying to paint the fibers a rainbow of colors at once, there is no reason to use plastic wrap. I plan to keep using sturdy resealable bags. They can be rinses and used multiple times, and they really help me keep everything neat and organized.

Anyhow, I won't be getting to this next experiment any time soon as I have other projects that I need to finish, but I will share my results when I get to it.

The Process: 001 Dyeing Cotton Lint (Deep Orange? More Like a Fuzzy Navel)

I'm really jealous of the Wool People. There's so many fun fibers and colors of fibers for them to play with, but I have my insane reasons for limiting myself to cotton. In the meantime, I'm diligently spinning an entire pound of white cotton sliver, and surprise, it's not that exciting. I have plans to dye it after it's plied, but that's a long ways off. So, I got to thinking, if the Wool People are able to dye their Superwash Merino before spinning, well, could I do the same with cotton? Joan Ruane, the cotton guru, has done it before, and so maybe I can too. Then I'll have a ton (well, just under 2 lbs) of pretty fibers running through my fingers as I spin my favorite fiber ever.

Dyeing cotton is not a new experience for me. I've done a lot of shirts, sheets, and fabric. I've tie-dyed, tub dyed and painted with dye. I've taught other people to do it. I've overseen classes on dyeing. I'm not that good at it, but I understand, or at least have heard of, most of the basic ways you can add color to cotton. However, other than on the internet (and even that information is scarce), I have yet to see anyone dye cotton lint. There might be a reason not to. I'm going to find out. I tried two different methods. Tub dyeing and direct application.

Tub Dyeing

I tried to kinda-sorta followed Joan's directions and Dharma's. The following is an account of what really happened. I do not blame you for skimming past right to the results.

Oh no, it doesn't fit!

1. I started up the computer and kick-ass sound system, then navigated to Pandora.com to put on Bjork.
2. While the cotton lint is probably up to 99% cellulose, there might be other weird crap on there that will prevent the cellulose from accepting the dye, like natural pectins, or oils from my greasy taco fingers. So, I scoured 1.50 oz. of raw cotton with 3/4 teaspoon of Professional Textile Detergent in 1/2 gallon of water in a cooking pot that I no longer use for cooking.
3. With gloves on, because this detergent is brutal, I submerged 1.50 oz. cotton  into the pot and squished it a little until saturated with water. At first it seemed like, holy shit, way too much cotton! With a few squeezes, I made it fit easily, with some room even. 
   

   

   Never mind

    
4. I turned on the burner and let simmer for about 15 minutes. The reviews on this detergent complain about fumes, so I was a little worried about doing this, but I didn't get any fumes. Or maybe I gave myself brain damage such that I can't smell anymore. Who knows. I pulled the cotton up and flipped it over with spatula, then smashed it a little with spatula, all the while trying not to pull too much on the cotton, which would end up making unusable rope.
5. I decanted the water down the drain. It was really gross and brown, which lets me know that I wasn't just wasting my time. After letting it cool a bit I rinsed the cotton multiple times in a wire colander.

   

   Everything's pre-measured and ready to go

6. As far as the dyeing process goes, I weighed out all of the dry ingredients ahead of time, while wearing gloves, eye protection, and a dust mask. Most messes come from being rushed, ill prepared, and disorganized. If you weigh out your stuff ahead of time, all you have to do is add your ingredients when you're ready.
7. I microwaved a cup of water for a minute and a half and dissolved 3 tsp of urea into it.
8. I microwaved a little more water, added 0.03 oz of dye to it, and made a paste out of it.
9. I added the urea-water to the dye to make a slurry. If I'm being completely honest, I actually did all of this while waiting for the pre-wash earlier.

   

   
   

10. When ready, I poured a half-gallon of water into a pot and dissolved 1/2 cup of salt into pot. The salt is supposed to bring the dye to the cotton fibers. It does not fix the dye to the fiber as some mistakenly believe. Think of it this way; you have this dilute concentration of dye. It's going to need some help locating the fiber. Salt is the match-maker.
11. I warmed up the water on the stove. I'm doing all of this heating because it will help move the particles around, dissolve them in the water, and encourage chemistry to happen.
12. Being careful not to splash, I added the dye slurry to the pot of water.

    

    Half the fun is not having to clean up a big mess

13. In went the cotton. I pushed down on floating clumps and 
    agitated occasionally. I kept a plastic cup nearby as a spatula rest in order to prevent messes.
14. As the cotton was just sitting there in the dye bath, I dissolved 2 3/4 tsp of soda ash in warm water.
15. After about 10 minutes, I pushed the cotton aside and added 1/2 of the soda ash-water to the dye bath.
16. Another 10 minutes passed by before adding the rest. I pulled some fibers out intermittently, and noticed more of a golden color rather than deep orange, but 10 minutes later it seemed to be getting deeper!
    

    

    Looks promising!

17. I stirred frequently for a half hour, trying to get those dye particles to meet the fiber, which would hopefully pop off the hydrogen from the hydroxyl groups in the basic environment. Yeah baby, drop those hydrogens.
18. I dumped the dye bath, and then rinsed with cool water. When cool, I smooshed the cotton into a ball and gave it a good squeeze, then continued to rinse until the water was pretty clear.
19. The pre-wash instructions were repeated.
20. There was a final rinse and then I let it dry.

Direct Application Method

I'll discuss my results later, but *spoiler* I did not like my results. So I tried more of a tie-dye technique. My hope was that in introducing the dye to the fibers directly, I would get a more intense color. Anyway, I won't repeat the pre-wash directions because the are the same. By the way, I substituted Kate Bush for Bjork.

1. I microwaved 4 cups of water, and dissolved 1/4 cup of soda ash in it.
2. I poured all of that in a plastic tub, and after squeezing all pre-wash rinse-water out of the cotton, I soaked the cotton in the soda ash water.
3. Meanwhile, I dissolved 3/8 tsp urea into 1/8 cup of water. I added some of that to 1/4 tsp dye and pasted it up. Then just said screw it and added the rest of the urea-water before pouring it carefully into a squeeze bottle.
4. I squirted the dye onto cotton, then gave it a nice little massage. 
5. I put the cotton in a vegetable bag, and squeezed out all of the air, then put that in a sealable freezer bag. I left it in the backyard, hoping it would stay warm, although I'm not sure if exposure to the sunlight was a bad idea. Anyway, I forgot about it for 24 hours before washing it with PTD again.

Results and Conclusions

Neither of the methods produced Deep Orange. Unfortunately my camera phone doesn't convey the results accurately, so you'll have to trust me that the direct application method produced deeper, brighter, more saturated color, and it was also easier and less messy. It's so annoying, I'm looking at my dyed fibers with my own eyeballs right now, and the difference is so obvious. But they both suck, so maybe the true color not showing up great in these photos doesn't matter.

Top: Tub Dye Method
Bottom: Direct Application Method

Look at the lighter regions of the fibers to understand what I'm trying to convey here. The shaodows make the fiber look more saturated than they are. Tub dying produced more of an Orange Sorbet while the direct application almost exactly matches Orange Crush.

Yeah, yeah, it's still pretty, but it's not what I was going for. As it turns out, if I had done a little more research ahead of time, I would not have been so surprised. Leigh's Fiber Journal tried pretty much the same thing with the same materials and produced the same weak-ass results.

It's not like I went into this unprepared either. I did research and made careful calculations based on the dry weight of my fiber. However, the amount of chemicals I used came from recommendation for cotton items that have already been woven or knitted. Perhaps the core of a thread is not completely penetrated by the dye bath, and here I am trying to dye every single fiber, like an idiot. Why the hell do I want to do this again? If my hunch here is true, then that means I must increase the amount of dye per ounce of cotton lint. That seems a bit wasteful.

Another thing I learned recently is that soda ash doesn't just interact with the cellulose fibers, it reacts with the dye particles too, rendering them gradually less effective over a short period of time. Because of this, your dye bath will never be exhausted or clear as in acid dyeing in wool. You will always have some shitty dye particles left over. I don't like that, not only because it's wasteful, but because that seems pretty crap environmental-wise. The reason I have been so careful with measurements has been to eliminate waste as much as possible.

For the next time, I've got some changes I'm considering. Primarily, I need to use more dye. When I started this project, I calculated the amount of dye needed based on the dry weight of the fiber. I'm beginning to think that the amount of cotton isn't all that relevant to calculating how much dye you need. I have a hunch the concentration of the dye being applied to however much fiber you have is more important. This is why I'm also going to try to dry out the fibers between pre-washing and dyeing. In both the tub dyeing and direct application methods, the fibers were pretty well saturated with liquid before applying the dye, which may have caused the dye to be too dilute for good results. Why this doesn't seem to matter with pre-made articles of clothing or yarn currently evades me.

There were some challenges with physical properties as well. The clumps of cotton are difficult to break up without forming unusable rope. These clumps also form air bubbles which prevent the fibers from coming into contact with the dye. Moving forward to address this issue, I will be doing a craptacular job of combing the cotton into some rough roving-like logs. Hopefully this will make the fibers more available to the dye without me having to stir up the fibers and tangle them.

Everyone else in the world who felt like dyeing cotton lint would be neat-o is probably just going to be happy with their pastels, and that is fine. For me personally though, things are going pretty well in my life, so in order to keep my karma balanced, I feel like this is a pretty safe thing to stress myself out about.