Dye experiment - shades of gray

This month, my experiments in the studio are focused on shades of gray.  I'm doing some dyeing of new colors to use in some new collage pieces, and as scarves and pillows to sell in my etsy store, so there's been some trials.  One of my problems is that I like to work with silk and I'm using the Procion dyes that are formulated for cotton.  Why is this a problem?  Well, the dyes attach at different speeds with the different fabrics so what goes on as a fairly smooth gray on cotton, separates into the component colors on silk.  I usually like this effect but for my scarves/pillows, not so much.   I'm still working out the kinks, but thought I'd share my progress so far.

Here's a photo of the 6 levels of intensity which is my usual first experiment to decide how much dye to use for a particular size of fabric.  I did six levels,  essentially doubling the amount of dye per cup of water at each level so the leftmost fabric is very pale at 1/2 tsp of dye solution, and the rightmost is 8 Tb.   The purplish colors really shows the level of separation that occurs with this gray which is a blend of green & purple.

And here's my experiment with various ways of putting the fabric into the dye.  Scrunching gives more mottling (the leftmost one), folding gives a definite pattern and the rightmost one has the fewest folds and got patted flat and tilted so the dye moved around more often.  My photography wall is gray felt so this isn't the best way to show these samples, but I think it's good at showing the surface texture produced by the different ways of putting the fabric into the container.   The rightmost is the one I'll be trying to perfect as it's a lovely silvery gray with slight subtle mottling.