I have been prompted by a natural dye enthusiast to document my summer project. Sorry if it puts most of you to sleep. Here goes.
A couple of years ago, I signed up for a Master Gardener Class. One of the books I bought through the class is Weeds of the West, a heavy tome containing photos and descriptions of many of the plants growing in or near my back yard. A local wetland park, just a few blocks away, contains many more specimens. My husband and I walk there regularly and each time we ventured through the park, I'd examine a few new plants, memorize their features, and then go home and look them up.
Last summer, I decided to try some natural dyeing, thinking I could use it in a larger project that I was planning. When I looked through my dye book collection, I happened to pick up North American Dye Plants by Anne Bliss (the first edition, privately printed, was called Rocky Mountain Dye Plants. Note that both of these are available from www.abebooks.com for less than Amazon prices). With my new weed knowledge, I recognized many of the plants in her book and started marking pages for the ones I recognized. Initially, I identified 24 plants and this project was born. Most of the plants bloom from late July through mid-September, so I started working on this mid-August.
The yarn I used was some that was given to me by a friend when she was cleaning out her stash. No idea on the vendor, but it was labeled Crewel, and I assume it was for either needlepoint or crewel embroidery. It is a worsted spun, lustre wool, with a slight yellow tinge. Long lustre wools take dye very well and which usually results in vivid colors.
The first step was winding the yarn into skeins around a small niddy-noddy. I calculated that 24 skeins = 4oz, the dye formulas I had for mordanting were based on 4oz measurements, and I had conveniently marked 24 different plants. This dye plan was lining up nicely.
24 skeins were mordanted in alum and 24 in copper since I already had these chemicals on hand. I used A Dyer's Manual by Jill Goodwin for my mordant recipies. I cooked each batch of skeins in the mordant for an hour, then let them cool in the pot. I marked the Alum skeins with a short red yarn tie so I didn't get the skeins mixed up after dyeing.
I have two dye pots, both regular roasting pans, one small, one large. I used the small one for this project, and set it up on the back porch since cooking plant materials are sometimes quite odiferous. When I collected plants, I took all but the roots -- the stem, the flower and the leaves (there were a few exceptions; I used only the milkweed leaves, only the wild rose hips, and only the walnut hulls). I chose plants where the blooms were fresh. I filled the dyepot to the brim with plant material, covered it with water (not shown is the metal grid I used to push the plants under the water), put a lid on it, and cooked it for at least 1 hour. I checked it periodically and when the plant material looked cooked (darker green), I turned the heat off and let it cool. On most plants this took an hour; some took up to 2 hours. This is Curly Cup Gumweed.
Once it had cooled, I strained off the liquid, put the plants in the compost, and put 2 skeins of yarn in the pot, one for each mordant. I cooked the skeins for an hour, then left them in the pot until the water cooled. This process was repeated for each plant/skein.
The results? Wow. I wasn't expecting anything more than faded light green. Here's what I got.
Want to see that up close?
The first skein to the left of the gap is the original yarn, followed by two skeins with mordants only: white (alum) and light green (copper). The rest of the skeins are in pairs with the darker one always the copper. I did sneak in one non-plant skein; the purple one is cochineal.
After dyeing these skeins, I decided to dye enough yarn to make a project or two, but the only large skeins I had were for white sock yarn, mostly merino or superwash merino blended with nylon. The results? Not as spectacular, but still nice colors. Unfortunately, many seem to be the same color although they were all dyed with different plants and mordant combinations. I used my large dye pot for the larger skeins (with significantly more plant material), but I suspect the ratio of dye material to yarn was much smaller.
The top three balls are a generic sw merino/nylon sock yarn from Woodland Woolworks in cochineal, peppermint and walnut. On the bottom row, from left, Brown Sheep fingering (yarrow with alum), a no-name fine wool (curly cup gumweed with alum), and Treking sock yarn, a sw merino/nylon (milkweed with copper, milkweed with alum, yarrow with copper, tansy with alum and tansy with copper). When I realized that the larger skeins were significantly lighter than the original sample skeins, I threw some of the crewel yarn skeins into the sock yarn dye pots which, in the skein photo, show up as lighter green skeins (at 10 o'clock and 3 o'clock). Since these skeins are lighter, I assume it is a difference in dye concentration that resulted in the lighter colors.
This was started as a dye project, not a dye experiment, so I didn't control all the dye conditions as well as I should have, had I wanted to duplicate results. I didn't weigh the dye materials; the second batch used dye stuff that was collected a month after the first set (as the flowers were fading), etc.
What's next? Nothing for this year. Next year, I have another 24 plants tagged that I want to dye. I have been volunteering at the Idaho Botannical Garden and they have a Lewis and Clark section where they have plants listed in the L&C journals. My job is to trim back the overgrowth, and I'm allowed to bring anything home that might have dye potential. I've already got my eye on several of the plants!
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