1st compost dye project

Not wanting to waste anything I decided to do a compost project with the grape hyacinth flowers strained from the dye.   Picked leaves and flowers from outside and placed them on a piece of fabric soaked in soda ash.








Then I sprinkled the grape hyacinth over it in clumps.  Next I sprinkled a bit of tealeaves.  I also added a rusty circle. ( had to bend it in half to roll up)

It was already turning a lovely shade of green.  I dug a hole next to one of my rose bushes and covered with leaf litter and dirt.  Now how long can I wait to dig it up.  (Hopefully til fall)

 Photographed so I would remember where I buried it -( in front of orange roses and paper whites)

dyeing with grape hyacinth part 1

Yesterday, I took my grape hyacinth flowers out of the freezer and crushed then up. I added water in a 2:1 ratio and brought the mix to a boil and let simmer for an hour. Next I added a tsp of Alum to the pail mixture and it turned a very nice purple. This was let to sit for 24 hours.

This morning the mixture was strained for dyeing.  I wet the fabric I had previously soaked in soda ash and allowed to dry and used a pole wrap to create patterns.  Here is a picture of it dipped for just a minute.  It has more of a green shade than i was wanting.

I wet fabric, not soaked in soda ashed, in water and vinegar,twisted it and dipped it in some extra dye.  It instantly took on this lovely purple shade. 


 I splashed some vinegar on the other cloth and where it touched it became purple.   So I added about a tablespoon of vinegar to the solution. I like the two colors together. Will see the results in a few days.

 

After checking this evening the fabric looked more of a solid blue.

Pounding leaves for color

Here are a few pieces of fabric I pounded with a hammer and fall leaves inside. 

Leaf Dyeing -part 3

The darker cloth in this set had been previously rust dyed on chicken wire with results much to faint.  The rust reacted with the tannin in the leaves and gave a nice purplish color.

 Before washing

 After Washing and ironing

 

Waiting to dry and annoying my family!

a few more ironed cloth pieces

Part 1 Leaf Dyeing

This is the first post in my leaf dyeing experiments.  The first thing I did,  after collectiny my leavers, was to press them between the pages of a large phone book over night.  Then I spread them out on fabric that had been soaked in soda ash as a mordant.  I misted the fabric and laid the leaves down.  Next I covered them with a second cloth. rolled the cloths into bundles and tied them.  Here are pictures of the lovely colorful leaves.

Study in Reds

Sycamore Leaves

Leaf Bundles

        As you can tell from my photos, I started out with various kinds of fabrics and colors of cloth. I used cotton and linen fabrics.  One of the cottons was dyed  previously in dry Black-eyed Susan heads. Another had been rust dyed on chicken wire but the print was too faint.  I was hoping for a little reaction from the rust and the tannin in the leaves.
Result pictures coming soon.

Huge Mushroom

I came home this evening to find this huge mushroom on my porch. (I'm guessing it is from my neighbor.)   You can't tell from the picture but I can't get my hand around the stem it is so thick.  I thought the texture was really cool.  Anyway it is very soft and is calling out that it wants to be fabric dye.  Below is a picture where you can see the stem.

Dyeing Results from magnolia

The magnolia pods and dried Blackeyed Susan centers made a great color, but faded when rinsed. I will try some more with a stronger batch when I can find more pods.

wet

dry

dry

wet

Wrapped around copper

wet                                dry

Dyeing Garden

My flower garden is dying, but that didn't stop me from using the dried materials to dye some fabric.  This was just a simple experiment.  I packed some small baby food jars with plant materials, poured warm water over them, stuffed a small piece of PFD fabric in the jars and sealed them.  Then I let them sit 2 weeks on my front porch.  No mordants or anything else was used.  Most of these were very weak as my rain deprived and neglected garden had little to yield.   The coreopsis seed heads turned the water a lovely yellow shade right away.  The cloth was dark yellow until rinsed, then it was very pale.  I believe if I boiled the ingredients instead of only setting them in sun and used some mordants results would be stronger.  Here are the sample pieces. I am going to make them into a quilted journal cover for my natural dye notes.

The images below show samples and what was used as well as the original cloth color.