tougher than it looks

i've been seeing posts about solar dyeing, and thought i would give it a try; as it's still in the 90's here and the thought of turning on the stove and standing over it for an hour is rather unbearable. using the leftover dyestuff from past dye projects, red onion skin and avocado skin, i pleated and wrapped some of my prepared alum mordanted cloth bits and let them soak outside in the sun for two days. the avocado is still soaking, so no results to post of yet.

i was happy with the results of the cotton swatch soaked in onion skin; finally some patterning to my dye efforts! as i've been going through my selvedge magazines i've been reading a lot about resist dyeing, i think that that along with shibori will be my next area of study. the linen piece was okay, some dye penetrated the edges but the inside of the pleat was still white. pretty, but not as interesting as the cotton.

i've been admiring the progress eva of tinctory has been making with her smocking pieces, and have to say that i was impressed and enchanted with her work last year, but am really enthralled by her current natural dye artworks. one day i shall own one of her lovely pieces for my own.

i had tried my hand at smocking in the past and every attempt was quite sad, so pulling out the art of manipulating fabric, i tried once more using the dyed linen swatch. after several eh stitched attempts, i ripped them out, and tried to simplify my approach. two rows in and i thought of what could fit in the niches to make it more interesting, and to aid in holding them open. looking through my bead collection, at first i tried seed beads (too small), then swarvoski crystals (too saturated in color), and finally my pearls (they popped right in and added a delicate glow to the soft coloring of the dye). as i sewed, the piece started to take shape and i pictured a 3-dimensional brooch; so when i was done, i sewed it to a bit of felt and a pin. at the finish of this project, i have to say hats off to tinctory, as this was a more difficult skill than i had previously thought, and requires a good deal of thought beforehand. i'm not sure if i shall make further attempts, but a skill learned is never lost.

underneath

i'm really enjoying my experiments with natural dyestuffs. the exhaust baths are incredible! the first soak in the avocado skins gave me a cool medium pink, but when i reused the dyebath a second time the cloth became a warm pinky peach, mostly pale in saturation.

with the red onion skins the first fiber batch came out a yellow green shade, and the second dyebath was a rich olive green. i wasn't able to reuse the marigold dyebath, as i poured it down the drain foolishly. but i'm hard at work collecting every bloom my little plant throws forth!

i wonder what would happen if i were to change the ph of the dyebath? i must pick up ph strips when i go grocery shopping again, and do some reading research. i would also like to collect more local dyestuffs. i'm on the lookout for sumac berries (which aren't ready yet), eucalyptus leaves, and anything else that would yield somewhat colorful material. i would love to dye some purples, for instance. anyone in the south east have any good sources or plants i whould look out for?

second baths

i dreamt of dyeing an ombre swatch before going to sleep the other night. so the following day, i used the leftover dye baths from my previous experiments, the avocado and the red onion skin. i noticed something about the finished swatch; the colors were not the same as my first samples. so i gathered up some swatches of material, and did some more dyeing.

the second red onion dyebath produced an olive green instead of the bright chartreuse. i rather like this color as well. the fabric took the dye up rather quick, same as the first bath, so perhaps i can get a third dyeing out of it yet.

the avocado bath also produced a color shift. the results from the first bath was a cool medium pink, but the second gave me a lighter warm peachy pink, very pretty. i let it simmer for over an hour, and the color did not deepen much from the swatches i pulled out after half an hour; so perhaps the bath is exhausted.

red = green?

i'm in the middle of prepping fabric for the dye pot, so i thought i'd post a photo of my red onion skin results. i used alum as a premordant, and with the exception of the two lighter colored bits, they are all cotton. the triangle wedge is a scrap of wool felt and the other is a scrap of unknown fabric i had at hand, both of which i just threw in the dyepot to see what would happen.

i used an organic red onion, just the outer dry skins, boiled it for five minutes and then removed the skins and dunked in the fabric. the fabric just drew up the color so quickly; the longest any of them were in the pot was fifteen minutes. i really like this green gold color, it's very pretty.

well, off to check on my fabric pots!