Tag: cotton

Winter goldenrod

PiaPlant Dyeing

wintergoldenrod

There have been comments about my use of freezer space 😉 so I thought I’d get at least one experiment done “for the books” after I’d seen these puffs in the December sun.

I’d saved a guesstimate of 500 g of heads, no leaves. Enter 25 g of wool, 3 silk, 30 cotton previously dye fail with iron and weld, thought it would be interesting with the high dye ratio (it wasn’t). Careful not to boil and leave it as long as last time. Steeped overnight:

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Things to ponder:

What would the same dye ratio look like with fresh plants? I could have put more into this pot to exhaust the bath, as I’m sure there’s plenty left, but I didn’t have the heart to. I have so many yellow skeins and I just don’t use that colour very much.

Is it my temperature or the species of Goldenrod that gives me the bronze colours rather than bright yellow? (as seen elsewhere)

Weld – reseda luteola – farvevau

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weldI wasn’t actually sure if my weld plants would grow big enough the first year (my previous batch didn’t), nor whether I could use the leaves from the rosettes, or have to wait for stalks.

Turns out the first year leaves dye just fine. In fact, so well that most of the dyestuff from the first pot ended up on the synthetic tulle that I used to submerge the plant matter! I use a large canner for plants that need a controlled temperature, and it has a hotplate IN the water, so I figured I need to keep the plants away from it.

As you can see in the top and bottom photos, the plants thrive much better in my prepared, watered and weeded patch in the garden than the rough living in my overgrown abandoned veggie garden.

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So anyway, the yarn afterwards looked really bleak compared to the tulle, so I ended up picking more leaves and just tossing them in on top. I just did 2 wool skeins with some cotton tests, then did another batch with a strainer over the hot plate instead for the rest of the wool. Much better.

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Also a single copper skein, rhubarb, and some in blue pots, one of each type.

weld4Weld likes chalky water and temps below 70 C. Solar dyeing on silk wasn’t that great a succes though, at least not with just the leaves in the jar and no artificial heating.

Big bag of dried weld from last year in my closet, so I may elaborate at some point during the winter, if not I guess it’ll grow back next summer.

Not my most exciting dye adventure to date, I hope to do more with weld in the future.

GUUUL!

Jeg var faktisk ikke klar over, om førsteårs rosetterne var noget at farve med, eller om man skulle vente på blomsterstilke, men det viste sig at gå glimrende. Dog satte det meste af farven sig på den tylpose jeg havde lavet for at holde planterne væk fra kogepladen inden i den henkogningsgryde jeg bruger til planter som ikke må overstige en vis temperatur.

Anden omgang gik lidt bedre og jeg fik checket bÃ¥de rabarber, kobber, jern, vaid og japansk indigo. Et par silkefed blev det ogsÃ¥ til, jeg viser kun det ene, for det solfarvede kan knap nok kaldes lysegult, snarere tonet hvid….

Rhubarb mordant part 2

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I have long last concluded my first test of using rhubarb leaves as mordant instead of chemical ones. (even though they are in fact toxic, they are natural. Or, as MotherOwl points out below, even though they are natural, they are in fact toxic!)

And I have to say, it’s not really worth the effort. Not only does it not help the wool take up the dye any more than an unmordanted skein, in fact sometimes I could hardly see the difference. It also doesn’t add to lightfastness, both of which are the whole point of mordanting in the first place.

I tried both wool and cotton and none had better results than the other for me.

rhubarb

Top to bottom and left to right: Alum + rhubarb simmer not boil, boiled rhubarb + iron, boiled rhubarb, rhubarb + madder, rhubarb + weld, rhubarb + french marigold.

The alum mordanted, rhubarb dyed skein was also a handsome yellow in itself for sure, although it has faded a bit in just a month even without light. Without mordant they are a varying shade of beige depending on how hard you heat the dyebath. The madder is also quite alright, although not any kind of red exactly.

It did have one redeeming feature though: I really liked the shade I got from overdyeing with woad. From historical textiles we can see that some yellows fade away, leaving a once green section of fabric blue, but I’m not really expecting anything I make to live for 600 years. I’ll be forgotten and the line will die out when I do. It’s a patchy dye job because the vat had too little water and too much yarn, so I believe the darkest strands are the “truest” had it been done properly.

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Check also under comments in my first post for additional info.

Rabarberbejdse

Ikke den helt store gevinst efter min mening, hvilket vi også debatterede under foregående indlæg. Garnet bliver ikke lysægte eller optager farve i samme grad som med alun, de gule farver kan knap nok ses ovenpå selve rabarberfarven som bliver mørk beige hvis man koger den. Det brunlige garn på billedet er krap, og den er vel ok, den grønne er overfarvet med vaid, og blev ret god, bortset fra jeg havde for lidt vand i gryden, så den er lidt skjoldet.

Got the blues?

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Harvested all my japanese indigo (Polygonum tinctorum), it was rather limp and old I think, took a bit to get the vats looking properly. But here’s the result, with various overdyed yellows as well. Both wool, silk and some of my failed cotton skeins, more about those later…

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Today is the last good weather for a while they say, so I really should get started on the woad!

Japansk indigodanish

Som før nævnt er jeg lidt sent ude med at få brugt mine blå planter pga alle de andre eksperimenter jeg har lavet i sommer.

Men nu fik jeg da høstet al min indigo og det lykkedes også til sidst at få lidt farve ud af den, selvom det ikke opførte sig helt som det plejer. Der er både uld, silke og et par af mine håbløse bomuldsfed, som jeg fortæller om en anden dag.

1/3 gone

PiaBooks & reading

This month seems hellbent on getting done! Ok, a third sounds a bit more than just over a week somehow, but still. Not sure I’ll be able to keep up!

So it’s not Wednesday for wips and reading, but here at the cottage it’s Fiber Friday, so there.

This is what I’ve got home from the library this month and my still not very advanced holey sweater. I think I’m getting to the beginning of the end of the first two skeins, though.

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I managed to dye a bit with Japanese Indigo today, not a lot as my plants were pretty limp from the drought. I would like to do a couple of really dark blue, as well as remember to bring my silk outside too. If nature doesn’t water the garden soon I guess I’ll have to!

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I also washed a tiny bit of fleece, the green stuff from the other day. Seems to have cleaned up well enough!

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The weather forecast says this might be one of the last sunny, warm days. The coreopsis is running amock, there’s no way I can pick all of them!

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