Tag: flowers

Plant watercolours

PiaPainting

Heidi told me about making water colours from plant dye, so I just had to give it a go even though I don’t really have the time or energy right now for another project.

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I still need to work on getting a more concentrated solution, the day I did this I had to go out, so I couldn’t let it sit on the stove to steam for hours. There’s also a matter of how long it’ll keep, my first jars were too tall for the fridge, then I managed to not have time to test the liquid for days. Then it got cold and rainy and not good for picking flowers… you get the idea.

So I’ve just been doing some washes, layering the solutions to see how dark they would go, adding iron and copper as well as soda ash and vinegar to modify. Nothing happened in fact, it may need to be heated – again, no time. And then I noted several days after, that my swatches had changed colour. So there is a possibility for modification, but a high rate of unpredictability or a steep learning curve in knowing what you’ll get eventually.

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I started out with coreopsis and tagetes, meant to do a batch with weld also. But, well. The tagetes turned out very greenish yellow and the coreopsis nearly brown, so I’ll have to do perhaps birch for a warm yellow (or Dyer’s chamomile, which I only have in a dried variety by now)

Then there’s coffee and tea, tea with iron. I’m thinking mainly backgrounds for illustrations, to start off on something not white.

I tried getting direct prints from the flowers by “hammering” them into the paper, but just got brown smudges. The colour is not waterproof after drying, so wetting these papers again for eco printing would probably wash most of it away.

I’ll investigate some more, at some point, for now I hand over the torch in case somebody else has the urge or would like to share their knowledge. I used 10% alum in proportion to weight of the liquid.

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Plante-akvareldanish

Et meget kort og forhastet forsøg pÃ¥ at lave akvarelfarve fra planter. Det fungerer – men er lidt upÃ¥lideligt mht farveændringer via kobber, syre, base, jern osv, da farverne først skiftede pÃ¥ papiret flere dage efter jeg havde malet det pÃ¥. (og allerede smidt varianterne ud). MÃ¥ske det virker bedre at opvarme hver enkelt variant eller lave dem mens det oprindelige bad er varmt.

I virkeligheden havde jeg hverken tid eller ork, skulle i byen den dag jeg kogte blomsterne, så jeg kunne ikke lade dem stå på blusset og dampe mere ind, vejret blev skidt til blomsterplukning og jeg har bare for meget at se til.. Men hvis nogen skulle få lyst og måske endda dele deres erfaringer, så er bolden hermed givet op. Der er brugt 10% alun i forhold til væskens vægt.

Jeg brugte tagetes og skønhedsøje, egentlig ville jeg også prøve vau og birk, men det er det så ikke blevet til endnu.

Fun with coreopsis

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Last time I tried to grow these, I got a few spindly stalks with hardly anything on them. Which means, this year I totally underestimated how far apart I should plant and now I have a waist high jungle of thick, thick plants with hardly a size 5 footprint anywhere for me to reach the middle for picking flowers. I’ve taken to wearing my Fivefingers, to make the footprint smaller than a pair of Crocs (I apologize to those of you who are fashion conscious, but they DO work well for zipping in and out of the house all day).

I know they work really well frozen, so this year I’ll try drying some and see if that works, because it’s easier to store anywhere. Whereas steak and peas don’t survive for very long on a wardrobe shelf…

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And I’ll have enough to conduct a series of tests, as I’ve heard a rumour they are pH sensitive. If you just want a regular yellow, you need less than half your yarnweight in flowers, or you can start with plenty and dye one skein at a time from orange over turmeric to sunny yellow until it exhausts. It also doesn’t need a lot of heat once the dye is extracted from the flowers, it’s excellent for solar dyeing and on silk.

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So the plan would be:

  1. alkaline for reds
  2. acid for yellows
  3. test skeins in neutral
  4. amounts – work my way from strong dyebath to an exhausted one
  5. if the reds come out – test them with tin, to see if it gets even redder
  6. iron and copper possibly

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You can get a lot of different yellows from the exhaust, depending on amount of yarn, plants, temperature, how long you let each skein remain in the bath etc. Here’s the 2011 batch with some cold dyed Japanese Indigo:

Japanese Indigo

Skønhedsøje

Coreopsis tinctoria er rigtig god at lege med fordi man kan få så mange forskellige nuancer. Hvis man starter med et kraftigt farvebad og kommer 1 fed i af gangen, kan man få fra kraftig orange over gurkemeje-gylden til frisk solgul.

I år ville jeg så også lige teste påstande om at den er pH følsom, rød fra basisk farvebad og gul fra surt. Det blev en helt anden slags gul end ellers, og pga en fejl fra min side (manglende base) lavede jeg også lige en variant med kobber.

Der skal meget lidt blomst til, til alm gul behøver man mindre end halvdelen af garnvægten. Også flot på silke og god at solfarve med.

Det fungerer ogsÃ¥ rigtig godt at fryse blomsterne, men i Ã¥r vil jeg ogsÃ¥ forsøge at tørre, da det er lidt nemmere at opbevare. Bøf og ærter holder knap sÃ¥ godt i et garderobeskab. 😉

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Tagetes 3

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Having used double up plant to yarn the first time, I wanted to test the dye properties at 1:1 ratio. I used the tagetes tenuifolia.

I did 1 alum, 1 rhubarb and then 1 copper mordanted in a pot of its own. And yes, it’s different, but not green like the first year, I must have really overdone it back then. Now I’m intrigued as to actually getting green on purpose.

Rhubarb: you disappoint me (again). It may be that it only works in some plant combinations, but frankly then I can’t be bothered. I also have no succes with it on cotton, but more on that later.

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These three skeins didn’t even get simmered, I just put them in the warm dyebath to soak. So I decided to test how far I could go on the exhaust, one skein at a time. 5 more skeins, so that’s 200 g yarn from 75 g of flowers.

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Tagetes 1

Tagetes 2

Tagetes igen igendanish

Sidst brugte jeg dobbelt op af plante i forhold til garn, så jeg ville lige teste en gang 1:1. Samt det rabarberbejdsede garn og kobber i en gryde for sig.

Denne gang fik jeg ikke grøn fra kobber som det første år, så nu tænker jeg jo på, hvordan man får det med vilje. Rabarber er igen meget skuffende/kedeligt, jeg tror ikke det er noget jeg vil bruge krudt på igen.

Efter 3 fed farvet 1:1 ville jeg så teste hvor meget ekstra farve der var i, så jeg blev ved med at putte garn i, et fed af gangen indtil det blev meget lyst. 5 stk. blev det til, så det er i alt 200 g garn til 75 g blomster! Jeg brugte Appelsintagetes denne gang.

Marigold – Morgenfrue

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Calendula Officinalis.

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I didn’t check up on dyeing with these flowers, but I hope you do. Don’t bother. Really, I mean it. Just leave it. Instead use the following options, if you have this plant in your garden:

  1. Look at them, enjoy them, soak up the colour with your eyes, they’re very pretty.
  2. Pick the leaves and add them to salads or smoothies, they’re shock full of antioxidants.
  3. soak the leaves in a good olive oil, when they begin to sink to the bottom the solution is ready, strain and keep in a nice flask for treating burns or small cuts.

Silk mordanted with alum, dyed at a ratio of 20:1

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Mordanted silk solar dyed for a week in hot weather in greenhouse:

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The solar dyed skein after an iron dip:

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PÃ¥ danskdanish

Hvis du har sået morgenfruer i din have, foreslår jeg at du bruger dem på følgende måder:

  1. Nyd dem med øjnene
  2. Pluk kronbladene og put dem i salater eller smoothies, de er fyldt med antioxidanter
  3. Lav en olie til små sår og forbrændinger ved at lade dem trække i olivenolie til bladene begynder at synke til bunds, si dem derefter fra.

Det kan VIRKELIG ikke betale sig at farve med dem. Ovenstående resultater på silke er dels 20:1 plante:garn opvarmet OG trukket natten over, dels solfarvet i et varmt drivhus i en uge.

Tagetes 2

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Testing the Tagetes patula “French Marigold” in the same way as the first batch.

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The dyebath was quite brown compared to the other tagetes, but in the end this skein also came out a strong yellow. They’re not completely the same hue, so this year I’ll probably continue testing them separately.

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Two years ago I also dyed with the same flower type and got 3 greens. I suspect that since one skein was copper mordanted, it simply poluted the dyebath, and not because the flowers or my method that year were any different.

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(looking rather metallic in the sun – they’re not really)

This is the reason I prefer modifying with iron and copper rather than mordant, even if I rinse the skeins well. But at least we know this dye can be modified, so I’ll be testing that as well. They may also become one of my choices for testing the rhubarb mordant vs. unmordant and alum in terms of colour and lightfastness.

Tagetes 1

Tagetes 3

på dansk

Samme test pÃ¥ denne tagetes som pÃ¥ den foregÃ¥ende, ogsÃ¥ med flot resultat. De tre grønne er fra forrige Ã¥r, hvor det ene var kobberbejset, sÃ¥ jeg mistænker at det har “forurenet” hele farvebadet. Men det kan jo ogsÃ¥ være interessant. Jeg foretrækker dog at tilføje jern og kobber efter farvning, af samme Ã¥rsag.