Custom-blended vs Hand-dyed Fibre

I sell a few different kinds of fibre preparations – hand-dyed fibre, custom-blended fibre, batts, sari silk roving and silk sliver – but I know that often when I say 'custom-blended fibre', people aren't always sure what I mean. 

I get most of my fibre blends made for me. I specify how much of what fibre I want in it, how it should be blended, and how much of it I want, in kilos.  I get some of those blends in natural colours, which I then dye, and these are listed under 'hand-dyed fibres'. 

Sometimes, I want to be a bit playful with colour and content, and this is when I get my 'custom blends' made.  I choose the colours and fibres I want in the same way, but I don't generally dye them (an exception is 'Underwater Love', which was so uninspiring in its original colours that I had to save it from ignominy). 

Hand-dyed fibres

When I dye my fibre bases, I either hand paint them or I kettle dye them. When I hand paint, I select between 3 and 6 colours, and then 'paint' them onto the fibre at intervals. This creates a set of colours, which are distributed in blocks along the length of the fibre. Hand-painting is great for planning your spin, as you can separate out the colours into predictable blocks, lengthwise or horizontally, and spin them accordingly. Space Cowboy and Giverny are two of my favourite hand-painted colourways. 

When I kettle dye, I usually dye a base colour by immersing the fibre in the dye water. I then heat it up, and sprinkle other colours over the top once it's hot, and the base layer has set into the fibre.  This means that the colours are slightly more randomly distributed, because I can't control exactly how the dye is going to move over the fibre, and through the water. Wisterical and Winter Garden are great examples of this technique. 

Custom-blended fibres

With the custom blends, the options for how you spin them are reduced because instead of blocks of colour being distributed along the fibre, the colours are blended along the length of the fibre. This creates a more homogeneous effect, depending on how finely you spin. The finer the spin, the more homogenous the colours.  

I usually get these fibres blended three or four times. I like that this blends the fibres enough that you get an overall sense of the final tone, but not so much that you can't get lovely depth of shade and pops of colour along the length.  

You can see in these two images how the colours blend when the yarn is spun andworked into a fabric. On the left is Kite Flying and the right is Tickled Pink.

If you have any more questions about types of fibre and spinning them up, just fire me an email by clicking this link. 

I've also made a little YouTube video to show you in a bit more detail what I'm talking about. You can find it here.