Tag: natural dyeing

Common reed – tagrør

PiaPå dansk

It’s time right now here in DK at least to harvest the “feathers” from Phragmites australis.siv3I haven’t used it before and only have time for this one experiment. Some say it can be frozen, others that the dye can be frozen, but nobody seems to be very sure.

The old recipes say to divide your fiber in 2 batches, dyeing one after the other and then dunking half of each portion in iron for 15 minutes (needs to be a warm bath it seems). Several have said that the 2nd bath doesn’t really give much though. One could perhaps dye the first portion for a shorter time? Dye ratio at least 3:1 I’d say for just the one bath.

Anyways, a lovely green. I dyed some birch skeins real quick and did one overdye, which is almost electric to look at.

siv1

Some people get a neon green, or like a granny smith apple. Could be the water, could  be that I use CoT and they only use alum? If I run into another batch I may try. I also put a small bunch in the freezer for testing if they keep.

Post on frozen reeds >>

Tid til at høste tagrørdanish

Hvis man er glad for grøn, så er det nu man kan plukke “fjerene” af tagrør og koge dem et par timer. Mindst 3:1 forhold til et enkelt farvebad, de gamle opskrifter siger man kan smide en portion mere i, men det bliver lidt kedeligt. Muligvis skal man tage hold 1 op tidligere end 1 time? Man kan efterdyppe 15 minutter i et varmt bad med jernvitriol for at gøre farven mørk, eller man kan komme gult garn i, som det birkefarvede ovenfor.

Silken blev lidt fesen. Det hele er bejdset med alun. Nogen får mere neon/æblegrøn, om det er vandet eller om det er fordi jeg også bejdser med vinsten vides pt. ikke. Hvis jeg render ind i flere, prøver jeg måske, ellers har jeg som test puttet et par duske i fryseren, for at se om de virker bagefter.

siv2

Daffodils / påskeliljer

PiaPå dansk

I wanted to test my new plant dyeing yarn type, which I’m very excited about. It’s not only cheaper than my regular supply used to be (it has recently gone up 20% in price), it’s also much nicer. Smoother, more plies, and comes in readymade 25 g hanks.

not the ones I used
not the ones I used (1993)

So I’ve been deadheading daffodils for a few days, leaving them to soak in water until I had enough. In fact I was so busy collecting, that I forgot to take a nice flower photo for this post first!

I haven’t had time to do any natural mordanting yet, so I did the usual alum routine.

I didn’t actually expect much, but was pleasantly surprised, especially with the unmordanted hank, which is considerably more coloured than the dandelion hank I did on the same day.

I then collected the last heads and did an iron mordanted hank as well. I’m extremely pleased with this! Remains to be seen how fast these are of course. But I like this green so much compared to other iron induced greens or the nettle sample I did the other day, that I may just get more bulbs in the fall just for dyeing green!

daffo02
1. unmordanted, 2. alum+CoT, 3. alum+CoT+iron
Daffodil top, nettle bottom (no iron)
Daffodil top, nettle bottom (no iron)

Påskeliljer

Det siges jo at man skal prøve alt mindst een gang, så i år hoppede jeg på påskeliljerne. Vi har ikke så mange af de helt gule i haven, men det blev da til et alunbejset fed, et ubejset og et jernbejset.

Jeg samler når de begynder at visne, eller hvis nogen er knækket, og opbevarer i vand indtil der er nok, gerne flere dage.

Jeg blev da glædeligt overrasket over hvor meget farve jeg fik ud af dem, så den er absolut på listen over mulige planter i fremtiden. Faktisk er den grønne ret fantastisk i forhold til det ene fed brændenælde jeg har fået lavet (mere på vej).

Jeg har ikke nået at lave alternative bejsninger, som fx. rabarber, de er kun lige begyndt at kigge frem.

Get your pots and jars ready

PiaPå dansk
Corn Marigold / Glebionis segetum / gul okseøje

Soon the plant dyeing season will be upon us, so it’s time to find yarns and get them mordanted (I always do this ahead of time and then just keep the labelled skeins on hand). This year I’ll be working with more natural mordants such as sea water, tannins, soy and rhubarb leaves.

I’m looking for cheap silk yarns and/or fabrics that I can cut into swatches to add to my sample library. As well as cotton.

I’m also going to help myself to some structure by creating a section for it here on the blog with an easy access plant list of which I’ve done and how, update my tags and some other stuff I’ve been thinking about, hoping that it might prove useful for other people as well. I have a few science experiments in mind that might interest you…

I take requests for topics! Who knows, maybe my library contains items I haven’t even thought about mentioning yet. But please be patient, I won’t be finishing this off in a day or two. In fact I’m feeling a bout of blog fatigue coming on, so we’ll see how it goes!

Corn Marigold / Glebionis segetum / gul okseøje
Tussah silk dyed with the flower above (and a few of its friends)

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danishDet er ved at være tid til plantefarvning lige om snart – mon der kommer nye vaidplanter? Så det er nu man skal i gang med at samle garn, få det bejset osv. så det er klar hvis man lige skulle få lyst til at smide noget i gryden! I år har jeg tænkt mig at lege med naturlige bejser som havvand, rabarberblade, garvesyre og soyamælk i stedet for eller sammen med metalbejserne.

Så jeg er på jagt efter bomuld og silke, som garn eller stofrester jeg kan bruge til at lave prøver med. Gerne billigt…

For at hjælpe mig selv til at holde struktur på tingene, og måske være en hjælp til andre, går jeg i gang med at udvide plantefarvningssektionen her på bloggen med lister, opskrifter, links, tips og andet. Jeg tager også imod forslag til emner, måske ved jeg noget, som jeg bare ikke har tænkt på at skrive om endnu?

Og jeg vil gøre mit bedste for at også opdatere det hele på dansk. Det kommer nok lidt i bidder hen ad vejen, så kig forbi i ny og næ.