What are Babettes and Wild Irises?

Dye Styles: All About Monochromes, Babettes and Wild Irises

updated June 2021

Babs describes her work as a dyer in two ways: first, the craftsmanship of the production dyer to create reliable, repeatable monochromes, week in and week out; and second, the creative flair of the artist who plays with color, looking for something new.  

Here at Miss Babs we have three dye styles.

Monochromes are our solid colors. These are dyed in a controlled way to help ensure consistency across skeins and from batch to batch. Because they are hand-dyed, each skein will still have tonal variation which gives interest to your finished project.

Babettes are our repeatable variegated colorways. These are dyed using a method that creates artistic variability from skein to skein and batch to batch. We use the same colors of dyes for each batch of a colorway but the appearance will vary. The placement of colors, the temperature of the yarn, and the yarn base all impact how yarn takes the dyes. However, our detailed notes on the dyes used and conditions in the studio allow us to repeat these colorways (again, with variation).

Wild Irises are our way of nurturing creative play and artistic expression on yarn! It’s important for Babs and our dye team to have time to experiment without pressure, so we don’t keep notes on how to dye these non-repeatable colorways. There will always be new and unique Wild Iris colorways, both monochromatic and variegated.

(Additionally, if a skein from a batch of a repeatable Babette colorway is wildly atypical - if it turns out too dark, too light, or somehow missing some colors, we'll give it a different name and call it a Wild Iris.)

As you look for yarn on our site, you’ll see a label in either pink (for Babette) or purple (for Wild Iris) above the yarn on many colorways. If you’re shopping in person, the physical labels have the same stickers.

In the photo, you’ll see that Rainforest, at left, is a monochrome colorway, with no sticker. Right As Rain, center, is a Babette with a pink sticker, and Focal Point is a Wild Iris with a purple sticker.

We hope this helps you choose the right yarn for your project! As always, if you have questions don’t hesitate to ask. We always recommend buying enough yarn at one time for your project, and we do our best to match multiple skeins (if necessary, dyeing a new batch). We’re also always happy to email you photos of our current stock to help you decide.