My Dyeing Days

Natural dyeing can seem like magic, or it can be so disappointing. It all depends upon your point of view.

After drip-drying (to help set the color) my hollyhock Tea-shirt (not in direct sunlight and not making contact with any metal surface), I washed the shirt in the washing machine, gentle cycle, cold water, eco-friendly detergent, then air-dried it in the dryer with no dryer sheet. Just in case I have to dye again...

The pH of our hard water brought out the gray undertones of my black hollyhock petals. I remembered why I haven't dyed with hollyhocks in a few years now.

However, there is some magic, and kids will love this part.


I put the shirt back in the same strained jar of green tea, rainwater, apple cider vinegar and hollyhock pigment, and on contact, the color changed. Right before my eyes. I swished the Tea-shirt around to make sure every stitch made contact with the vinegar again, and hung the shirt on a plastic hanger to dry in the breeze, not in direct sunlight. The shirt wasn't in the dye jar more than a minute. The color changed that quick.

I probably shouldn't have dyed a Tea-shirt I plan to wear with hollyhocks because the dye is pH-sensitive. That means my sweat would change the color of the underarm portions of the shirt. That could be pretty embarrassing... Nevertheless, kids have fun with the changing colors, and there's nothing that would be dangerous for them. Hibiscus works the same way and can give some lovely hues of pink and blue, depending upon the pH. You can go back and forth as much as you like.

For my pH-sensitive shirt, I can either overdye it with avocado pits or skins next month when the dye is ready, or I can overdye it with conventional dyes. Or I can keep it as is as a reminder of why I don't dye with hollyhocks!

I also had stuck a white cotton scoured fat quarter in the hollyhock tea dye before the shirt came out of the dryer and let it sit a couple of days before drip-drying, so now I have a color-changing fat quarter, too. (That's it in the video above.) This fabric might be really fun for my little neighbor to sew and play with, but I also have the option of overdying it with one of the avocado dyes next month. However, for now, it sure is an attractive color, don't you think? Plus, my little neighbor LOVES pink.


It was time for the onion skin/sumac T-shirt to come out of the dye, so I wrung it out, put it on a plastic hanger, then hung it in the breeze, not in direct sunlight, to air dry. I love the mottled colors!


I stuck a fat quarter in the red onion/sumac dye to simmer in the sun. It will be lighter in shade than the T-shirt because the T-shirt soaked up a lot of the pigment, which was the desired result.


My newly ordered alum finally arrived, and I quickly mixed up a batch of rainwater with about three tablespoons of alum and about a teaspoon of cream of tartar, which I then let sit in the sun for a couple of days.

My final scoured cotton shirt went into the potion for another day in the sun, and now the shirt is properly mordanted for just about any natural dye.


I strained the second batch of red onion skin dye (which also has a tad of cider vinegar in it just like the first batch) into the alum and T-shirt potion. I let that sit in the sun for a couple of days (because we're not triple digits this week, otherwise the jar would have to simmer in the hot summer shade). Onion skins do not necessarily need a mordant, but mordant doesn't hurt, either. Also, onion skins can be another pH-sensitive dye, but the color I get after washing should be much more attractive than hollyhock gray. Fingers crossed...




After pulling the T-shirt out of the onion skin/alum dye, I dropped in another fat quarter. Both the shirt and the fat quarter will be a lighter shade than the sumac/onion skin shirt when finished because this was the second strain from the onion skins, which now have been buried in the garden along with the exhausted hollyhocks.

The fat quarter will be lighter in color than the sumac/onion skin shirt because a lot of the onion skin pigment stayed on the shirt, meaning less pigment left in the jar. I can make both darker, if I want to, by making fresh dye from the red onion skins that didn't make it into the first dye jar. (Remember, I started out with a full pound of onion skins but couldn't fit them all into the tiny jar and later had to transfer the strongly scented pickled onion dye into a larger jar.)


I can collect a few more red onion skins when I go grocery shopping. I'll make that decision when I figure out how much extra time I can put into this particular batch and what the weather will be like. I'm spending a lot of my limited free time these days thinning my garden, taking out dried plants that have been baked by triple digits, shredded by hail (three times now!!!) and/or simply past the thriving and blooming season. When the weather is as hot and dry as it has been this last month, it can be challenging to keep the garden looking well-manicured!

I was going to cut down all the past-prime daisies, but the gold finches like the seeds. I can live with dead flowers as long as the birds keep coming!






This is my jar of copper mordant from several years ago. I have only about 8 ounces left, thanks to some copper-dyed crochet thread I made a few years ago and evaporation. Remember, copper is not something you want to use with children or pets, and I am not planning to do a tutorial but did link to another blog that describes the process in my last natural dyeing installment.


I had planned to dip one fat quarter into the copper before sticking it in the onion skin dye, just to see what color would result. Just like when I dyed crochet thread so long ago, the copper hue is so darned attractive, I decided to keep it and dunk yet another fat quarter in the copper mordant for the onion skin dye! (I have four more fat quarters with which to play).


I loved this color years ago, and I still love it now!






I then dipped another fat quarter in the copper mordant, just enough to get it saturated, then dropped the fat quarter in the onion skin/alum potion. Both copper fat quarters were in the dye jar just long enough to stir them around and make sure all fibers make contact with the fluid. Less than one minute.


I let the fat quarter soak in the onion/sumac potion for a few days, then pulled it out all the fat quarters and hand-washed them. I'm happy the color did not change significantly, except for the hollyhock fat quarter. I might let it stay gray.

One of the things they say about natural dyeing is that all the colors go well together. Wouldn't these be pretty in a quilted handbag?


Linking up with Busy Hands Quilts and Confessions of a Fabric Addict.

Tweet

My Dyeing Days

Well, it finally happened, and way too soon for me, but we have hit triple digits along the Front Range of Colorado, so I had to move my natural dyes out of direct sunlight. 100 degrees could turn my dyes brown, so I've put them in the shade for now.

Nevertheless, the onion skins and hollyhocks are ready to use! Can you believe it?!?

I prepared my 100% white cotton T-shirts, dress and fat quarters by scouring them, which means I washed them with Borax and did not use a softener of any kind during the drying. I've heard Dawn dishwashing liquid will work, too. The object is to prepare the fabric (or yarn, when I get to that stage) to receive the dye. White cotton T-shirts or other garments and white cotton fabric purchased at just any old store often are treated, so they won't take up the dye well or will be spotty, taking the dye unevenly.

100% white cotton garments or fabric sold as "PFD" means it has been prepared for dyeing, however, Dharma Trading Company, which is where I buy most of my supplies (and no, I don't receive any perks for posting the link), recommends preparing their PFD items by scouring anyway. Natural oils from your fingers (or from other handlers), dirt and lanolin can prevent some dyes from adhering. It's always good to start with a fresh slate. I wear disposable gloves during the mordanting and dyeing process, so I'm minimizing my fleshy contact with whatever I'm dyeing.

Next comes the mordanting, which means preparing the fibers to hold, bite or grab the dye. The word mordant is derived from the Latin word mordere and the French word mordre, both of which mean bite. It always makes me think of Mordor, and I imagine Sauron greedily sucking up all that luscious color with a death grip.

I had planned to mordant my T-shirts and dress with alum and cream of tartar. Lo and behold, I had barely a tablespoon left from my last dye session! Had I bothered to look at my stash when I first began preparing my dyes this summer, I could have ordered more alum along with the shirts and dress. I have ordered it now, and if it comes in before this blog post publishes, I'll add the alum process to the bottom of this post.


Onion skins supposedly do not need a mordant, but hollyhocks require one. There are other mordanting options around my house... I suppose the reason I ran out is because I was trying other things, such as soy, which, in my opinion, works better as a resist than a mordant. A resist means it prevents the dye from being absorbed, such as wax or salt. I still have three more bags of soy beans I can grind up and soak, but I'll probably use them as a resist now because I was so discouraged by the fading that occurred when I used soy to mordant some jelly roll strips (2.5-inch strips of fabric).










Technically, you can soak soy beans overnight in plain water, make soy milk (I've been using a Soyajoy milk maker with almonds and hazelnuts for many years now and LOVE it!), and then use the milk to mordant natural fibers. I've heard silk works better than cotton, so perhaps one day I will try with silk. You can see the results of using soy to mordant cotton above. I used onion skins, hibiscus petals (fugitive color, better used as tea) and hollyhock flowers to dye the cotton fabric strips, which turned out gorgeous. I hung the dried strips in the closet to keep them from fading, and they faded anyway. They were in near darkness, and six months later, the only color that remained was various shades of tan. I snow-dyed them that winter with conventional dyes, and once I get done with some of my other unfinished quilts, the overdyed jelly roll is destined to become a gorgeous Southwest quilt, pattern already picked!

Other (free) mordant options right outside my front door include curly dock (sorrel), which many people consider a weed, and sumac. I've obtained some lovely yellows from my curly dock (which has been mowed along with the grass now), and I plan to use my sumac drupes for dyeing because that prevents hundreds more plants from popping up each year. Plus, the natural peach dye is outstanding. It is my understanding that red sumac berries also may be used to make an ade that tastes like lemons, but I've never tried that.

To use sumac drupes (or bobs) as a mordant or natural dye source, the most important step is to wear gloves while harvesting. Those are some sticky berries!!! After cutting off the leaves (which also may be used for dye or mordant, but they will not make peach color), cover the berries in water, add a tablespoon or two of vinegar, and then either cook in a pot on the stove for a couple of hours or in a jar in the sun for as long as you want, just as we have done with the onion skins. Looking up what I've done in the past with onion skins and sumac combined has convinced me to dip one of my T-shirts into a combination of the two dyes. Oh, my gosh, I'd forgotten about this heavenly color!!!


The sumac drupes have been snipped and covered with the last of my first of two jars of rainwater collected back in June (I still have one jar left!), and the dye/mordant simmered on the porch for two days!


There's not much color because I didn't wait for the drupes to ripen. But there are plenty more drupes in the center of the two bushes I couldn't reach. After two days of solar simmering, I stuck a T-shirt in. I let the shirt simmer for a day or two before I strain the onion skin dye and add it to the jug.


I strained the onion skin dye into the sumac potion, then stirred the shirt around. I'm going to let it simmer a couple more days, but I'm really liking the color so far!






Oooooh, oooooh, oooooh! I just found an old photo of the color I obtained with onion skins and copper!!! I think I'm going to have to buy a few more T-shirts!!!


Here is an article on making a safe copper mordant. It's not necessarily something you will want to use with kids and/or pets, and proper disposal after completion is required. I have used a copper dish scrubber with vinegar in a solar jar to make copper mordant in the past. I still have a few ounces left, so I may use that next.




Back when I first made my copper mordant, we had a surprise snowstorm that froze all the large, plastic pots on my retaining wall. They survived the freeze, but the glass jars filled with a variety of dyes in my garage all cracked and spilled purple, orange, red and yellow dye all over the concrete. Plus, the jars were ruined. I was able to save the lids. My outdoor copper mordant, shown above, didn't play friendly with a moth that must have thought the pretty glacier-looking fluid was tasty blue Kool-Aid.

Because I don't have any alum yet, the best mordant inside my house right now is tea. I regularly drink herbal tea, as well as hibiscus and lavender, none of which create lasting color and do not act as mordants. Lizard prefers black or green tea. I asked if I could use a few black tea bags, which he graciously supplied, and I placed them in an empty but big clear plastic animal cracker jar with regular tap water, which I then allowed to brew on the front porch for 24 hours. I removed the tea bags and inserted a scoured T-shirt, which I let soak for another day.


The next day, I strained the jar of hollyhock dye into the very same plastic jar with the Tea-Shirt, which does have a tad of color from the tea. It will be interesting to see what the final hollyhock color on this shirt will be when it's done steeping. The initial color looks very promising!






The Hollyhock Tea Shirt will continue to brew on the porch through the weekend, and then I'll pull it out to see if I like the color. Remember, your wet dyed items will be two to three shades lighter when dry. That's why I obtain so many pastels in each of my dyeing sessions. I often get too excited about the wet color and don't wait long enough for it to deepen!

Last Saturday, I was tempted to let the Hollyhock Tea Shirt be finished. I had to force myself to put it back in the jug for another day or so!


Linking up with Busy Hands Quilts and Confessions of a Fabric Addict.

Tweet

Boxed and Packed

Moving week... just another head's up -- service interruptions could materialize this week as my blog moves from Blogger to self-hosted space. Am I beginning sound like a worried mama who's child is graduating to the next stage of life?

That's kind of how it feels!

One of the things I did to combat nervousness over the weekend was ride. I'm hoping to clear 1,000 miles before the end of May!

Another distraction came in the form of transforming white thread into different colors.


My grandmother tea-stained many of her doilies way back when I was still single digits. I've wanted to try it myself for many years, and I finally played around with some herbal teas over the weekend. I steeped thread for seconds, minutes and half an hour and ended up with three gorgeous shades of chai!


I was so pleased with the results, I decided it was time to try dyeing thread in living colors. Three tiny bottles of food coloring and half an hour later, I'd completed several shades from the rainbow. Plus a ball of rainbow.


Then I went totally wild and used some cranberry juice to color one more batch.


This was so much fun! I can't wait to try again, but mostly, I can't wait until this batch dries so I can whip it up into something awesome.

Tweet