Exhausting the dye bath

Yesterday evening, I made another dye bath from half of the weld I had left, after completing the 25 skein marathon. The rest is stewing in my slow cooker. There was enough colour left to dye four more skeins of wool. This time, I am preparing yellows for Lincoln Green, so I left one skein un-mordanted, and did not use any iron to assist in the dyeing process, only tin. Saddening with iron tends to turn yellow into brown, which is not an attractive starting point for over-dyeing with woad. I've produced four nice skeins of yellow. I need to resist the temptation to use them as they are, in order to save them for dunking in a woad bath later in the year. From the left, the skeins are un-mordanted, mordanted with alum, with copper and with alum + tin.

25 Skeins from One Dye Bath

For the past three days I've been absorbed in trying out Jenny Dean's method for obtaining 25 skeins from one dye bath. I chose 500 grams of weld for my dye bath, to dye 25 x 20 gram skeins of Chester yarn, aiming at a range of yellows. Last time I dyed with weld, the results were more beige than yellow, so this time I was hoping for better things.

It took me most of the first day to the up all my skeins, prep them for dyeing and do the first stage mordanting and dyeing. Five skeins were set aside with no mordant, and five were mordanted with alum, copper, iron and rhubarb leaves respectively. My weld dye bath was also prepared by drenching the weld with boiling water before leaving it all day to steep.

Once I'd prepared everything, I put all the skeins into the weld at about 8.00 p.m., and took them out an hour later.

This is what they looked like when I went to bed! There are two extra skeins of 'thick and thin', both mordanted with alum, on the top left hand plate

The next morning I took one skein of each plate, washed it out and set it to one side as an unmodified set. One skein from each plate was then modified with one of four modifiers: acid (vinegar), alkaline (soda); copper and iron, using Jenny's instructions from 'Wild Colour', a book I cannot recommend too highly. It is brilliant! The skeins took a lot of washing out afterwards, and were then hung up to dry overnight. I'm pleased with the results. It took me a couple of hours this morning just to label them.

The skeins have been arranged in groups by modifier. The top row is unmodified, except for the 'thick and thin' skein on the far right which was modified with tin, the only skein that I 'brightened'. The orange tones were all modified with soda, the green ones with copper, the brown ones with iron and the yellowish ones with vinegar. Within each set, reading from the left to the right the skeins are un-mordanted, then mordanted with alum, copper, rhubarb leaves and iron.

Willow

I was a bit skeptical about whether I'd obtain any colour from willow leaves, but I had a go anyway and my skepticism turned out to be unjustified. It just goes to show that even the most unpromising leaves may yield dye stuff. The photos show our local willows in Loughton Valley Park, my large basket filled with willow leaves and shoots, and my results, from the left mordanted with alum, copper, alum + tin and alum + iron.

Dock Leaves

I'd had my eye on a big patch of dock leaves in disturbed ground close to Loughton Brook for a couple of weeks, but I only got around to picking them yesterday afternoon. To my chagrin, the bugs had got there before me, and many of the leaves had been eaten into holes. Fortunately, I was able to gather fresh young leaves along the margin of the brook, and in some clumps of nettles close by.

The results from the dock leaf bath looked unpromising to start with, but after about half an hour I could see some interesting colours developing, so I added a skein of 'thick and thin' wool mordanted with alum, to see what that gave me. The results are quite gratifying. From the left, 'thick and thin' mordanted with alum, then my regular yarn mordanted with alum, copper, alum+tin and alum+iron. I plan to carry on dyeing with young plant materials as well as trying the more complex two stage process to make Lincoln Green.

Comfrey

I have planted a large container in my garden with comfrey plants so imagine my surprise when I went up to the Jubilee Graveyard and found our wild flower meadow was full of comfrey, just coming into flower.

I immediately picked a large basket full of leaves to dye with. The results are more yellow than green, but quite interesting nonetheless. I've just about doubled the quantity of leaves that I am using, which seems to be making a difference. From the left, mordanted with alum, copper, alum+tin and alum+iron.

Elusive Green

Can there be anything more frustrating to a natural dyer than to be surrounded by hundreds of lovely shades of spring green, yet not being able to recapture any of them in the dye pot? Loughton Valley Park is full of fresh new green leaves and shoots, but it seems almost impossible to distill them out into skeins of wool.

I first came across this problem earlier in the year, when I tried to dye with ivy leaves. I experienced then what I called my first 'failure', in that my alum mordanted skeins remained a dirty off white colour, and only the copper mordanted skein turned a pale green, mainly thanks to the bluish influence of the copper. Now I realise that green is a really hard colour to obtain in a one-step process. I'm working steadily through all the leaves that Jenny Dean tells me will yield dye, but so far with limited success. My best greens to date have also been obtained with a copper mordant, on narcissus flowers and dyer's broom.

My back up plan is to try a two step process, whereby I use a dye bath first of woad and then to over-dye it with weld, to make Lincoln Green.

Progress on the Allotment

My dyer's garden is filling up nicely. I must acknowledge that these will be little more than an illustration of the various dye plants that can be grown locally. To produce a viable crop I'd have to grow considerably larger quantities of each plant. Madder, for example, will not yield mature roots of three or four years. Woad, on the other hand, should be harvested in its first year, at the rosette stage and before the flower head forms. Nevertheless, it is useful to learn the properties and growing habits of the dyestuffs I am using for my woven banners and hopefully, later on in the year, I'll be able to plant out some of the seedlings that are beginning to sprout in my greenhouse.

Flowering Currant

So I had a peek at the Winterbourne Dye Project Blog to see what they had been up to in April 2016. Among other plants, they had been dyeing with flowering currants. This is the image of their results, borrowed from their website. Thank you.

I have a flowering currant in my garden, so I rushed out on Friday morning to give it a quick prune.

 I put the clippings into my slow cooker, and stewed them until Monday morning, before straining off the liquid and dyeing with it. These are my results. From the left, as usual. mordanted with alum, copper, alum + tin and alum + iron. Who would have thought a flowering currant would yield these colours?

Expedition to Ditchling

Yesterday, David drove me over to Ditching, to see the Ethel Mairet Exhibition. Wonderful yarns, produced according to her original recipes by modern dyers. I was interested to see that there were very few greens, and most of those had been obtained by overdoing a yellow dyestuff with indigo. I can see that green is going to prove a challenge!

Rhubarb Leaves

Spring has really sprung, and the rhubarb on the allotment is growing like Topsy. I stewed the leaves for an hour, left them to steep overnight, and made a dye bath from the strained liquor. Another four skeins in interesting colours, but not green.

Blackthorn Flowers

I thought I might be too late for these this year, but the sunny weather alerted me to the fact that there were still mature flowers on our local trees. I picked a basketful of flowers and twigs, simmered them for an hour or so, and strained off the resulting dye. Lovely strong colours!

Nettles

Ethel Mairet gave lists of British dye plants by colour in her book. There were hardly any plants at all listed under the colour 'green'. Instead, she pointed out that most dyers obtain green by dyeing their fibre with yellow and then over-dying it with indigo or woad. So now I know!

However, I managed to obtain some quite interesting 'greenish' tones from nettles the other day. I gathered them from the churchyard meadow adjacent to my allotment. I boiled them and then left them to steep for 24 hours, before straining them and preparing a dye bath using my usual method with four skeins. From the left, mordanted with alum, copper, alum and tin and alum and iron respectively.

Ethel Mairet

I've just bought a book on natural dyeing by Ethel Mairet, a natural dyer who had a studio at Ditching during the early years of the twentieth century. There is an exhibition based on her work at the Ditchling Arts Centre that I'm hoping to visit this Friday. So inspiring!

The Allotment

My allotment is looking more like a plot and less like a jungle. I've already planted up several dye plants, including: dyer's chamomile, madder, mallow, hollyhocks, golden rod, tansy, yarrow, rudbeckia, juniper, berberis and wild carrot. Some are so small that I can hardly see to water them, but now the better weather is here, they should start to grow away strongly. I'm looking forward to harvesting them later in the year.