Further Adventures in Natural Dyeing

So I havent had much chance to do dyeing for the past couple of weeks. This past weekend I went to a reenactment event where I met up with some dyeing friends from Rafnheim who dyed a beautiful array of colours.

So I was itching to get back to some dyeing and yesterday I put aside half a day and played with some new colours.

First I wanted to play with some of my flowers, so I soaked some marigold.

The first colours I got were a nice sunny yellow.

I read adding iron would make green.

So I added iron. I didn’t quite get green, so for the last skein I added a hint of gardenia blue. The results below.

From left to right, the skein with a hint of gardenia blue, marigold with iron (three skeins) and just marrigold.

When I bought these inside today the middle ones did look a bit more greenish.

With the fustic I found I had to leave the skeins in the iron overnight to get the green to develop, so maybe I’ll have to try that next time.

Meanwhile, did you notice that purple in the earlier photo? I know, right?

While not a new dye to me, I bought some different cochineal from a different supplier. I ordered it from America and this came in bug form that I ground. I dyed one skein and I got this beautiful deep purple.

This second photo is a little brighter than it is in real life, the other photos are more colour accurate on my monitor.

Then I had still colour in the dye bath, so I kep going, and so did the cochineal!

I dyed three more skeins in varying shades of pink. I then dyed another skein! But there was so little cochineal left I added a smidge of my powdered extract and a small amount of cream of tater.

I got the very bright colour to the left. Te middle is another marigold with gardenia (I dyed two, only one is in the above photo).

I tried dyeing with brazilwood. I should have looked up instructions because I just added some to some water and added my yarn. The brazil wood was powdered but all the bits stuck to my yarn, maybe it would be better to have chips and soak then drain? or try to pass the water through a mesh before using to filter the powder out?

But at any rate, I got a couple of pretty colours pictured below, and the one to the far right int he photo above.

Here are all (except three) of my happy colours out on the line.

Now I just need to hope I have time for dyeing next weekend and to decide what colours to do!