Dye Gone Wrong? ~ How to Rescue Your Roving

Here's a picture of the roving I have drying in the sun right now. It definitely has those fall colors working throughout. There are shades of chestnut and olive as well as burnt orange and warm yellow. Adding a little interest to the mix is a touch of pink. When this is dry, I think it will be very pretty.

Why am I telling you this? Well, because yesterday this roving looked so bad I could barely stand it! My intention was to dye this roving in shades of pink, chestnut and olive green, but something went horribly wrong. My olive green came out grey with hints of blue. It formed a terrible contrast to the warm chestnut tones. I set it out to dry trying to convince myself that it wasn't that bad. The next morning, gazing upon the fiber with rested eyes, I knew I had to rescue this roving.

It happens to all of us. Sometimes we don't get the colors we want. Maybe its a new and unfamiliar dye product or a dye stock that is getting old which is what I think occurred in my case. So how do you fix it? You can rescue your roving by dyeing it again. We call this overdyeing in the biz and people do it all the time.

This morning my roving went right back into a bowl of water with a little vinegar to soak. This is painted roving, so when the time came to dye, I laid it out so that all of the olive-gone-bad sections were together. I needed to warm up those greys so I attacked them with a yellow-orange. I could see that it was helping to bring in some of the green I had wanted in the first place. I also worked some of the overdye color into the pink to add some sunset tones. I knew the roving would be nothing like my initial concept, but it could still be pretty.

So remember, there's no reason you can't go back to the drawing board. Dye jobs gone wrong can be rescued. You may have to be a little flexible and roll with the changes. Who knows? You might find yourself with an unexpected and even more interesting outcome.