#dyestuff

[pegglefan69]

My onion skin dyed vest is done! 🧅 🧶 This is my first natural dyeing project & I had so much fun! I'm looking forward to learning more with the future projects I've planned

[himekokosu]

Safflower

[unidentifiedmammal]

Here's some funky 3D shapes I made out of purple coneflower heads!

But that's not what I picked them for. I used the petals and leaves for dyestuff! (and am gonna test the heads themselves as well)

First I took the flower petals and soaked them overnight. Meanwhile, I soaked some silk in iron mordant and some in copper mordant. Then I set them to simmer along with a jar of coneflower leaves (nothing in them yet)

Above is the iron mordanted (top grey) and copper mordanted (bottom tan)

and then here they are preparing to simmer in a pot of water. My dad actually recommended i try out the coffee pot after out coffemaker broke. He read about using one in a book about dyeing fibers specifically for fly-tying, aka making flies/lures for fishing. He's quite skilled in it, as well as the fishing itself :D

Once they finished simmering, the copper actually got as dark as the iron! The only difference is that it's slightly greener (photo above is copper on top, iron on bottom)

I also kept some of the mordanted silk, but left them outside to dry out and oxidize instead of putting them in a dyebath. The iron, aka the lovely rufous color, made the silk a weird texture that I fear might mean it's damaged. Iron will definitely do that if you're not careful! The light pastel-aquamarine-ish copper feels more like normal silk, which makes sense since I've heard it's less harsh on wool than iron.

(also note, i'm handling them when dry, but wear gloves when holding WET mordanted fibers, especially copper!!! better safe than sorry)

Anyways, here's the results compared to an undyed bit of silk! I remember I got a deeper green last year when I tried the petals with iron on wool. The technique is slightly altered of course (premordanting + glass container on silk this year, mixing iron directly into bath + aluminum pot on wool last year)

I still have to show the results of the leaf bath, and expand on the copper-only dye specifically! So I'll probably add onto this post with the leaves (and soon to be heads) and make another post talking more about experimenting with copper

[pegglefan69]

black bean dye + avocado pit dye. the yarn turned out how I wanted, so now I have a formula for a whole sweater! I'm really excited to see if the linen stays this pretty purple or if it'll turn blue once it's done.

[pegglefan69]

final color of the red onion skin batch of yarn! I'm so proud of how evenly it dyed, since this was my first try! I'll do a batch of yellow onion skin this weekend ^___^

[pegglefan69]

Finished yarn! 🧅🧶 Top one is yellow onion skins & bottom is red. This was so fun & interesting! I think I'll experiment with avocado next

[pegglefan69]

yellow onion yarn has begun...this is also nonmordanted! the color of the yarn itself is currently really similar to the red onion yarn in the early stages but the dye itself is amber...gonna see what 2 (or even 3?) days does to the final result. I'd really like for my vest to have stripes!

[pegglefan69]

boiled red onion skins for 3 hours without any mordants. gonna let it cool on the stove for a few hours before I strain it. I might actually start dyeing yarn tonite, we'll see! >:^)