4 | Scrappy Swiss Cross Quilt: How Many Greys?

Here’s a picture of all the greys squares and rectangles I would need to make a queen size Scrappy Swiss Cross quilt (yardage and cutting requirements found here):

(You can’t see every single piece, there are lots of stacks 4 and 6 pieces of fabric high). I do believe that most of those are different dilutions of Nickel, a mixed grey Procion MX fiber reactive dye available from ProChem, although since a lot of those are scraps it’s possible that there are some other grey/black dyes in there. You may notice that some of them have a greenish tinge to them, while others have a purpleish tinge. This is one of the trials and tribulations of working with dyes that are made from mixes – depending upon dyeing conditions you may get slightly different results. Now, I really love the greys I make with nickel, but with with the differences I’ve got, I wanted to add more different grey hues to make it even MORE mixed up. So, it’s time to try the new Procion MX dye that’s actually a pure grey – one single molecule is responsible for the color, rather than the mixtures that all grey and black Procion MX dyes have been up to this point. It was release late last Fall, and I finally got around to ordering one from ProChem!

Here’s the fabric batching in the late afternoon sun:

They’re in the washing machine as I type this! I can’t wait to see them! Hopefully, they won’t lean towards one color or another, and there won’t be patches of different colors – I often see veins of blue when I dye with Nickel, which I happen to like, but some people don’t.

The waiting is torture! I’ll go grade some lab reports to while away the time!