Last year sometime I wove some waffle-weave towels in Venne 8/2 cotton from Vav Magazine (March 2019). They were woven on eight shafts, with a straight draw threading. I made the towels a bit wider than the pattern suggested, and wove the hems as a double-weave tube rather than in plain weave with a finer weft – this worked really well, as the hems shrank the same amount as the waffle weave and there was hardly any puckering.

The final step in the project was to dip-dye the towels. In Vav, they were dyed a tasteful very dark blue/black, and, I realise now, this is how I wanted mine to turn out too!

Anyway…I soaked the towels in a solution of salt and soda crystals before dyeing with Procion MX dye. As I understand it, the salt makes the fibres more receptive to the dye molecules, while the soda acts as the fixative. I decided I wanted a silvery grey for my towels, so mixed only two teaspoons of dye crystals into my dye-bath of about 30 litres.

Here’s my set-up. The towel is held on an laundry airer over the dye-pot, pegged so that the bottom of the towel is just above the base of the pan. I could lift the airer with attached towel over the dye-pot which made the process easier as the pot was very heavy (something I hadn’t considered!). I left the towels very wet from the pre-soak solution.

After about 30 minutes I lifted the towel, still on the airer, out of the dye bath, and used a garden hose to rinse off excess dye – this seemed like the easiest way to avoid transferring dye to other parts of the towel. All looking good at this point, though having suspicions that the effect was a bit more subtle than I really wanted.

After rinsing thoroughly:

Yes, I suppose it is the silvery grey I thought I wanted. No, I don’t like it much. Lets remind ourselves what what I now know I did want:

So, more dyeing ahead I feel. I need a stronger colour, and like the fact that the dye-front isn’t even. It’s a bit annoying that I knew I wasn’t happy when the first towel came out of the dye bath, but carried on regardless.