A few weeks ago at a craft fair I got the idea to try doing some yarn dyeing using plants was born. The plan was to use Lupine flowers. A plant that is invasive where I live so it would be a win-win. Last weekend that plan got put into action.
Fourtunately I had the perfect yarn for this little experiment: some handspunn eider wool yarn that had been gifted to me by the lovely and talented @definitelynotanarchfey .
Friday I procured a nice big pot for dyeing thing in from the second hand store.
Saturday was mordening day. The yarn got taken out of their ball form and tied (not very expertly) into hanks. For mordant I used potassium alum.
After some initial trouble i managed to get the mordant bath to temperature. Turns out our little induction plate don't do pots this big, so fire it was. And with the yarn prepared and drying that was the end of the first day.
The actual dyeing day. I started by going out to gather some invasive plants, while thunder sounded in the distance. I returned home with a shopping bag full of the things. I might have gotten a bit carried away
A this point I decided to make an experiment. You see, I had both the dark purple flowers and I had also collected quite a bit of the pink ones. And i wondered, what will the diffrence in colour be? And since i had 2 prepared hanks of yarn I decided to test it out.
So for bath one I used the pink flowers as well as some of the stalks. Resulting in a nice tea coloured dye bath
Forbidden noodles in broth
For dye bath two I decided to use only the purple flowers. In total there was about 400g of flower in the bath.
this resulted in a very diffrently coloured bath,this one a dark, dull, purple.
In both cases the yarn was simmered for about an hour after comming up to temperature, and then left to rest in the dye baths for another couple of hours. Before being rinsed and washed.
The pink flowers gave me a lovely yellowish spring green colour while the purple flowers resulted in a darker more blue toned green. I am very pleased with both of these colours. Tho it remains to see how stable they are over time.
This was a fun experiment and i am already planning to do some more dyeing in the future. I still have one more untreated hank of the eider wool yarn. For this one I will probably try onion peel next.
However I am aware of some other plants near me that will also be collected and dried for future use. Just as I am doing with the excess lupine flowers :)
pixelskylines
germansingergirl
izzy806
vaporwave
titsay
discoholicmusic
prguitarman
andulkaphoto
