Learn about DippyDyes Solid Hand-Dyed Fabrics

If you take a look at the Cotton Solids Collection at www.DippyDyes.com you’ll see lots of items like this:

While this is totally clear to me, a light bulb recently went off in my head to remind me that it probably is as clear as a deep navy dye bath to everyone else. Here’s why they look the way they do!

Because of differences in eyes and monitors, it’s really hard to know if what I have photographed is what you see. So I’ve artfully arranged a piece of fabric and added an actual fabric grey-scale. That’s the piece of paper at the top with six grey to near-black fabric swatches on it. Those are all strips of Kona® Cotton by Robert Kaufman. They were chosen to represent five of seven steps in a value scale. To get a complete scale you’d add an off-white for the light end and a true deep black for the dark end. As you can see, the middle swatches for the medium value are very similar. (In case you are counting, that’s why there are six swatches and only five value steps represented.)

I’ve photographed the swatches on top of my hand-dyed solids to give folks an objective idea of how dark or light that fabric really is. The second photo shown in the gallery at the bottom is a black-and-white version of the same photograph. It was converted in Photoshop and helps take the distraction of color out of your decision about the true darkness of the dyed fabric.

I hope it helps you understand what you’re seeing when you’re browsing the Cotton Solids Collection.