Dyeing cotton sails

[Johannes JonesParticipant @johannesjones12331]

Stephen: I might give that a try at some point, but I have a feeling that it might develop rust-coloured dandruff as the sail flexes in the wind. Interesting thought though. If I’ve got any material left after all this, I’ll give it a go.

All: Yesterday, some dyes that I’d ordered arrived, and not being a particularly patient sort, I thought I’d have a go with the undersized mainsail. For my first attempt, have read that the 350gm pod of dye was good for 600gm of cloth and that to double the weight of cloth, you need to double the number of pods, etc., I thought I’d use a pro rata quantity of dye. As the sail weighed 54gm, that worked out at 32gm of dye, give or take. The result was a very pale, not very pleasant greeny-brown colour. So I upped the amount of dye to 100gm and tried again. The result can be seen in the photo below. Not bad, IMHO, but cloth that had acquired a covering of RTV sealant (used to hold everything in place while the sewing happened), didn’t get dyed, unsurprisingly. So the cloth would need to be dyed prior to making the sail. The light patches can be seen in the corners. Incidentally, the idea of holding everything in place with sealant came from one of Gary Webb’s excellent video tutorials on how to construct his designs.

The dyeing instructions said to wash the cloth with detergent after dyeing, so I chucked the smaller sail in as well to see how well the tea dye stood up to washing. Not that well, as it turned out. See photo. To me, it’s lost quite a lot of colour.I’ve added a scrap of the original undyed cloth for comparison.

John

PS The dye is Dylon Espresso Brown. I do like the contrast between the cloth and the stitching (polyester, so doesn’t take dye), so I’ll be retaining that feature, I think.

[Richard SimpsonParticipant @richardsimpson88330]

Always worth lots of experimenting, whatever it is you’re doing!

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