To celebrate the beautiful rich shades of the May garden, I've started a little purple, pink and indigo dyeing project.Yesterday I mordanted some silk scarves and wool with alum. After soaking overnight, they were ready to drink up the colors. I'm using madder, lac and indigo.



Pansies


 This is my favorite weather for gardening and dyeing - fresh and damp without harsh sunlight.


Pink, purple,and indigo in layers of wet color


The flowers come and go so quickly. It helps to visit the garen every day. Photographs are fine reminders.The pure colors of the garden are so inspiring. I'm compelled to use natural dyes to make textile reminders too.


Trilliums


I've found that the colors of a lac dye bath  seem to shift from ruby, crimson, rose and pink to a lavender gray if the dye is left to sit very  long, or when a lot of the pigment is depleted.  This seems to occur no matter what the temperature of the liquid,  the fiber I use, and in spite of any additives. Though these secondary colors are lovely and elegant, I want to use as much as possible of  of the rose and pink shades first  Wool is good for collecting these colors.  I'll work with the stately gray tones later.

 



Wool and lac


Drippy lilac



Drippy purple silk

Last of the lily flowered tulips with Humphrey, my helper in the background.



 

Comments

Anonymous

Looks like this experiment is a success. Such great colors, they sing to me

laura bellel

Thank you! Watching colors "bloom" on fabric and fiber is so much fun for me..:)

Meta

Hi Laura?, I found your blog through your beautiful pictures on Flickr!
Madder roots can function as a reducing agent in an indigo fermentation vat, together with bran. It doesn't matter if they are used up for dyeing. I want to try that once (wasn't succesfull yet) so I save used madderroots carefully for that purpose.

laura bellel

Hi Meta,
It's so nice to see you here - Welcome! (I love your interesting and lovely Flickr photos!)
Thank you very much for the good idea. I've read about using madder as a reducer for indigo, but didn't realize that it could be old, used-up,finished roots. Thanks to you, I'll definitely save these and add them to the indigo vat this summer.

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Good post, thanks for nice sharing news

Dunwoody Plumbing

An impressive share! I have just forwarded this onto a colleague
who has been conducting a little research on this. And he actually
ordered me dinner due to the fact that I found it for
him... lol. So let me reword this.... Thank YOU for the meal!!
But yeah, thanx for spending some time to discuss this subject here
on your site.

jimmy

All these three dying stuff looks wow!! Its something to die for seriously. Would you mind if I share these fantastic arts of yours with my followers on my essay writing service in melbourne website?

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