Dyeing with sumac berries

 Rebecca Burgess's book, Harvesting Color, is one of my favorite dye books. Because of this book, I've added pokeberries, bidens flowers, and sumac berries to my list of favorite natural dye materials. Over the past few years, I've used pokeberries an bidens flowers to make dyes, but hadn't used sumac berries.

 

This year while flipping through her book, I noticed a beautiful yarn she made with wool dyed with these three things. It's a wonderful burgundy, orange, and dark steel-gray all spun up and plied together into a striking, colorful two-ply yarn. It has now become a quest to spin up a yarn with these colors. The orange came first, after gathering bidens flowers. The burgundy came next after gathering prodigious amounts of pokeberries. That left the steel-gray.

 

I had a few stalks of staghorn sumac berries in my store of dried dyestuffs, but I needed more. My husband and I found a nice patch of smooth sumac and helped ourselves to some of their berries. The result was that I had a nice potful of sumac berries for dye: 



 



I mordanted my fiber (Corriedale wool) with alum and cream of tarter, but to get the nice steel-gray color from the berries, you need an iron after-bath. What I did instead was use untreated well water high in iron for the dyebath, and for good measure I scrounged my husband's tool area until I found a few rusty nails and a couple of neglected tools that had rust on them and threw them in the dyepot along with the berries. I was rewarded with a beautiful witch's brew of scrumptious, dark color:

 After straining the dye, I plunked my wet, mordanted wool into the pot and let it brew for about 1 1/2 hours. Here is the fiber fresh out of the dyepot, before rinsing:

 

And here is the fiber after rinsing and drying; I love this color:

 

Here are the three colors that I'll be spinning up:

 

From left to right, combed Corriedale wool dyed with
sumac berries, pokeberries and bidens flowers

I can't wait to get spinning!

Dyeing with Box Elder Leaves

 

My neighbors had an enormous, beautiful box elder tree in their front yard. Recently, with heavy rains, a large limb came down. A large limb came down a year or so ago, too, onto their driveway. Unfortunately, there were several limbs that would do severe damage to their house if they came down, so today they had the whole tree taken down. They were very sad about it. With their permission, I asked the tree guys if I could gather some leaves and bark. I told my neighbor I would try to make dyes with them, dye some wool, and then make something for them with the dyed wool so that they could always remember their beautiful tree.

 

I filled my large dye pot with leaves and simmered/boiled them for an hour. For the first dip, I mordanted around 8 oz. of Corriedale wool. After straining the leaves out, I plopped the mordanted wool in and simmered for an hour. The water I used was distilled water that I purchased because my water has been funky lately (we have well water and our softener is on the fritz). Here are the leaves in the pot:



 

 

When I took the 8 oz. of wool out, it was more yellow than green, but I rinsed it in my tap water and it came out of the rinse more green than yellow. Don't know if that's because of my water or not. The dye left in the pot was much clearer and a bright, pretty yellow, so I mordanted 4 oz. more Corriedale and added it to the dye pot. After simmering for an hour, the wool was a pretty, light yellow. This time I rinsed with the distilled water and it remained the nice, light yellow.

Below you can see the fiber drying. The green on the left is the first dip, the yellow on the right is the second dip:

 

 

I mentioned several things that I could do with the dyed wool to my neighbor, such as spinning it into yarn and making something(s), like a hat or scarf or mittens, etc; or I could wet felt the fiber into a felted vessel like a decorative bowl. She said, "Oooo!," to the felted vessel idea, so that's what I'm planning on right now.

 

I still have bark. I'll let it soak for a few days before I try to make a dye with it. The only reference I've seen on the web to dyeing with box elder bark gave a tan color as a result. I'm soaking the bark in untreated well water that's really, really hard. I'm hoping the extra iron and other things will sadden the tan a bit toward a brown, if I get anything at all. We'll see what happens. If I get any color at all, I'll try to remember to take pics and post about it.

Using dried and frozen Japanese indigo leaves for dye

 

Last year at the end of the gardening season, before the first frost killed off my Japanese indigo crop, I harvested a bunch of stalks to save. I hung some to dry; I took the leaves off of some, bagged the leaves in a freezer ziplock, and stuck them in the freezer; and I took the leaves off of some, laid them out on a flat pan, put the pan in the freezer, and left them to not only freeze, but to dry out (freeze-dry).

  

About a month ago, I tried brewing up a Japanese indigo dye pot in the usual manner (like I would for fresh leaves), but I used some of the freeze-dried leaves. It didn't work out. I meant to toss all of my frozen and dried leaves but couldn't quite bring myself to do it.

 

I'm glad I didn't because I just came across the book, A Garden to Dye For, by Chris McLaughlin. In it there is a recipe for using dried Japanese indigo leaves in an ice-water preparation to dye silk. Yippee! Of course I tried it right away.

 

The recipe calls for 4 ounces of J. indigo leaves, half air-dried, half microwave-dried. These are blended up with ice-water in a blender, the mixture is strained through a cloth (like a flour sack towel) and a strainer, and then the pre-wetted silk is placed in the thick mixture for 10-20 minutes. This is supposed to yield a light, turquoise-like blue on the silk. I didn't have any microwave-dried leaves, but I used all of the dried and frozen leaves I did have on hand. They totaled about 3.5 ounces.

 

The author of the book left her silk scarf in the liquid for 40 minutes. I didn't have any scarves, but I have lots of silk hankies, so I used some of those. Although I did see the blue color on the hankies at about 10 minutes, I left them in for 40 minutes. I also tossed in a small knitted swatch of wool I had on hand. After soaking, the silk should be rinsed and left hanging to dry.

 

I rinsed my hankies, and although I caught glimpses of that pretty turquoise for a moment, what I ended up with in the end was green. I don't know if that's because I left the hankies soaking for too long, because of the chemistry of my water (well water, run through a softener), or because some of my leaves were frozen, but not dried. The color is pretty, nonetheless.

 

Here are the hankies soaking in the thick liquid:  

 

And here they are after drying overnight. The turquoise ones on top are some hankies that were dyed in an actual J. indigo dyebath last summer. The little woolen swatch is to the right of those hankies, and the green hankies from last night's experiment are below those:

 

 

 

It's a nice color, especially on shiny silk, but not the pretty turquoise I was hoping for. I've used up all of my leaves from last year now, but fear not! I have another crop growing in the dye garden as we speak. I will, of course, repeat the experiment again in hopes of attaining that wonderful turquoise in the future from dried J. indigo leaves.

Getting purple with Hopi Black Sunflower seeds

EDIT: Please read to the end to see results and colors, I've included the not-so-successful results of this dye session, and added results of other experimental methods. 

If you're having trouble getting purple from your Hopi Black Sunflower seeds, you're not alone. I've had a hard time getting purple from the Hopi Black Sunflower seeds I grew this summer. You can see my previous post here. So far I've gotten a very pretty dark teal and various grays. I was becoming frustrated, so I began to do some research.

First I tried searching for books in my library that might have information on Hopi methods of dyeing. I came up with nothing there, so I turned to the Internet. I searched for Hopi methods of dyeing and came up with a couple of sources. One is a book called "Hopi Dyes," and the other is a book which combines that book with another and is called "Navajo and Hopi dyes," compiled by Bill Rieske.

My library sources didn't have it, so I looked for it on Amazon. I found a copy for just over $3, and with shipping it came to just over $7. Of course I ordered it:

 

I was wondering what types of mordants the Hopis used and this book tells of a couple, one of which is a naturally occurring, low-grade form of alum which leaches out of the desert floor and can be found in chunks. And the recipe for the sunflower seed dye called for this - hooray! I substituted my own alum and used considerably less than what it calls for in the recipe, since I suspect it's higher grade.

 

In my previous attempts, I had been mordanting my fiber before putting it into the dye pot. I was mordanting it with alum and cream of tartar. The recipe in the book has you put the mordant directly into the dyepot. I nixed the cream of tartar and used only alum.

 

The dye acted exactly the way the book said it would. Here's a brief summary of what I did, but I recommend you get the book, it's a treasury of information:

 

I brought my seeds slowly to a boil and boiled them gently for about 20 minutes. The book says no more than 30 minutes, or until the seeds split. You will get a deep maroon liquid:

 

The color of the drippings at this point, after soaking into a napkin, were a teal-ish gray:

 

After straining out the seeds, I added the alum - 1 1/2 tablespoons (I was originally going to dye about 6 ounces of fiber, but ended up dyeing only about 4 ounces).

 

The dye liquid turned a deep, royal purple after adding the alum:

 

 

 

You can see the difference in the color left by the drippings on the napkin after the alum was added, it is a pronounced purple next to the gray pre-mordant drippings:

 

The recipe calls for you to slowly bring the pot to a gentle boil again and gently boil for about 30 minutes, then take the pot off of the fire and leave the fiber soaking in the pot for 24 hours.

In my failed dyes, the fiber turned to either the teal or the gray pretty quickly. The yarn with this dyepot has remained purple and is now soaking until tomorrow:

 

The notes at the end of the recipe say that for wool, the color is not wash-fast, and on cotton, the color is not light-fast and will fade to blue with time.

 

I happened to dye about 2 ounces of bleached white yak, and about 2 ounces of white baby alpaca. I'll add some pictures tomorrow after rinsing.

RESULTS:

 

Okay, it's been several days and I'm just now getting around to posting pictures of the results. I did NOT get purple with this method. I let the yarns soak overnight, and the next day, they were gray. The two skeins from this batch of dye are the two right-most skeins in the picture below. The light gray is what used to be white baby alpaca, and the dark gray is what used to be bleached-white yak.

 

I repeated this same method the next day with one more skein of bleached-white yak, but this time let it stay in the dye pot for only about 15 minutes. I took it out and it began to turn gray almost right away. Within about 15 or 20 minutes it was gray as well. This skein is the left-most of the three skeins pictured together in the picture below. It is a medium gray compared to the other two.  

So, pictured above are the range of colors I've gotten with the Hopi Black Sunflower seeds, shown on the various fibers I've dyed with it. From left to right:

Washed Bluefaced Leicester/Dorset cross fleece with a small, combed sample of the dyed fiber, which turned gray. The fiber was mordanted in alum and cream of tartar before going into the prepared dye pot.

Superwash merino/Tencel roving, mordanted in alum and cream of tartar before dyeing. It came out a beautiful dark teal-gray.

Washed BFL/Dorset cross fleece with a small combed sample of the dyed fiber. I mordanted this sample with vinegar, and added vinegar to the dye pot, too. It came out a sort of grape purple.

Skein of bleached-white yak, dyed with the method outlined above, but removed from the pot after about 20 minutes. The nice lavender purple color turned gray right away.

Skein of bleached-white yak, dyed as outlined above. In the morning, the color was this dark gray.

Skein of natural-white baby alpaca, dyed as outlined above. In the morning, the color was this light gray.

Washed Border Leicester fleece with a small combed sample of the dyed fiber. I let this fiber soak in a warm pot of left-over alum and cream of tartar mordant water that had been used to mordant yarn for a different dye project. I added a bit of vinegar to this water before putting the fiber in. I then followed the method to prepare the seed dye outlined above, but I also added some vinegar to the dye pot after adding the alum. I then dyed the fiber for about 20 minutes. I took it out and rinsed it with the left-over mordant water before a final water rinse. It came out a slightly gray-looking lavender purple.


Below is a picture of that dark teal-gray color on that SW merino/Tencel roving. It's sort of hard to capture in a picture, but it's really pretty. I can't wait to spin this up - I'm hoping the spun yarn turns out as wonderful:

And here is a curious thing, also hard to capture with my iPhone photography skills - the medium-gray skein of yak was tied with yak except in one place where one of the ties was missing. I replaced that tie with a scrap of (sheep's) wool I had lying around. That tie actually came out lavender (maybe lavender-gray). You can sort of see it in the picture below:

 

 

I still have more seeds to experiment with. If I get any really wonderful results, I'll post about them, too. If anyone out there has any suggestions, or has successfully gotten purple with their Hopi Black Sunflower seeds, please let me know!

Dyeing with Hopi black sunflower seeds

[EDIT: For more information on dyeing with these seeds, please see this later post Here.]

 

I've been growing Hope black sunflowers in my dye garden this year. The Hopis grew and used them not only for the edible seeds, but as a dye source for basketry and wool. Apparently the Hopis were able to get a range of colors from the seeds, which are dark and shiny, including black, blues and purples.

 

Here is one of the flowers when it had just opened in the garden:

 

 

 

One of my flower heads was ready to harvest today so I brought it home. It actually could have stayed out in the garden a while longer, but I noticed that a few of the seeds had already been eaten by a bird or something, so I decided to harvest it now. All of the seeds were shiny and dark, which is all I needed them to be (I didn't need them to be totally dried out).

 

Getting the seeds out of the flower head stained my fingers purple. I read somewhere that the pigment was also used as body paint by the Hopis (don't know how accurate that is) so I wet my purple fingers and drew on my face and my daughter's face. It works!:

 

 

I took a picture of the seeds with a flash so you can see how shiny they are:

 

 

I got about 5 ounces of seeds out of that one flower head. There really isn't much technical information out there that I've run across about dyeing with these seeds, so I played it by ear. Lots of natural dyestuffs are used in a 1:1 ratio in weight of dyestuff to fiber, so I figured these 5 ounces of seeds would probably be enough to dye 4 ounces of fiber.

 

I put the seeds in one of my dye pots and added enough water for the fiber to float freely. I simmered them for about an hour. They made a very strong-looking pot of dye. Here are the seeds in the pot during the simmering process:

 

 

I chose 4 ounces of a 50/50 merino superwash/Tencel blend that I had on hand. I mordanted it with one tablespoon of alum and one teaspoon of cream of tartar while the seeds were simmering. After the seeds were strained out of the dyebath, I put the fiber in.

 

Superwash fibers tend to take dye up really well, and right from the get-go, the roving turned very dark. Much darker than the one or two pictures I've been able to find on the web of other Hopi black sunflower-dyed fiber. Those were a lighter, lavender color. Mine turned dark and stayed dark:

 

Here is the roving out of the dye pot and cooling off before getting a rinse - it's almost black:

I decided to try a second dunking in the pot. This time I used 4 ounces of alum and cream of tartar mordanted corriedale roving. Here it is in the pot, it looks like it will turn out much lighter in color:

This is the almost-black SW merino/tencel roving hanging out to dry:

 

If you click on the picture below, you can see a sort of poofy area about halfway down that has a greenish or very dark teal sort of tint to it:

And yet, overall, it really seems to be almost gun-metal gray-to-black in color:

It will be interesting to see what it looks like fully dry. I think it will be rather gorgeous because of the shine that the tencel will lend the fiber. Spun up it will probably be an exceptional yarn.

It's actually hard to get a color like this from natural sources. I don't know if I got this color because the fiber was superwash, or because the dyebath was really strong, or a combination of both, or... the list goes on.

I have lots more sunflowers out there that will be ready for harvesting in the coming weeks. I'll have plenty of seeds to experiment with.

Okay, here's one last picture - it's of the corriedale roving after rinsing:

It's much lighter, but gray instead of purple. This leads me to think the culprit is my water. We have well water, which runs through a softener, but the softener has acted wonky lately and we've gotten hard water out of the tap periodically. I'm thinking that the hard water helped turn the color from purples to grays on the fiber. It's really fascinating all of the factors that can affect the dye process and the resultant colors.

This lighter gray is nice, but I may spin it up and then overdye the yarn with something else - we'll see...

Dyeing with roots, leaves, and flowers

I've been doing some dyeing with natural dyes lately, using roots, leaves, and flowers. Below is a dye pot made with goldenrod flowers. In it is some Cormo wool roving, this is the second round of dyeing with this same pot of dye. The first round was some Teeswater wool yarn:

 

 

 

Here is some Cormo wool roving that has already been dyed with Japanese indigo leaves from my garden. It's going to go into the goldenrod pot next, but since it wasn't mordanted when it was dyed with the Japanese indigo, it's being mordanted now in this pot with alum and cream of tartar:

 

 

And here are the two rovings hanging to dry after dyeing and overdyeing with the goldenrod, they are on the far left and the far right. In the middle are six skeins of Teeswater wool yarn which has been dyed with lady's bedstraw roots (peach); green = apple tree leaves overdyed with spinach + kale, then overdyed with a weak pot made with logwood extract; and finally goldenrod (yellow, first dipping):

 

You can see that the yellow from the goldenrod on the Cormo roving (left) is much different than that on the Teeswater yarn (right). Different types of wool will take dyes differently, and colors in each successive dipping in the same dye pot will be different:

 

On the right below, is the green that was achieved by overdyeing the Japanese indigo with the goldenrod (third dipping in the goldenrod pot). It's a very different green from the crazy combination used to achieve the green on the Teeswater yarn:

 

 

It's relatively easy to dye one skein all sorts of colors using weak acid dyes because they can be painted or squirted onto the yarn and then set in the microwave or oven. It's a bit trickier to dye a skein of yarn multiple colors using natural dyes. I did it by dunking the part of the skeins that I wanted to dye a particular color into the dye pot (there are six hanging together there), and then repeating with successive colors. It took a few days to get all of the colors onto the skeins: 

 

One end of the skeins in the dye pot:

There are so many things that grow around here that make wonderful natural dyes, and too little time to spend over my dye pots!

All praise the sunflower gods!

I have a very tall sunflower in my garden this year, my daughter consented to pose for this picture to give it scale:

 

It's a Hopi black sunflower. I'm growing them this year for dye. The seeds are supposed to make a purple dye. I'm looking forward to the future harvest and dyepots!

Dyeing with apple tree leaves and bark

Out of all of my fiber work this past week, I allocated two days for dyeing. On Wednesday I collected my first Japanese indigo leaf harvest of the season and dyed up several ounces of fiber with that. And yesterday (Saturday) I trimmed a few small branches off of a wild apple tree next to my yard and used the leaves and the bark for two separate dye pots.

 

I had a few batts of carded babydoll Southdown wool which I decided to blend 50/50 with bamboo. In the picture below, a 100% babydoll Southdown  batt is on the left, and a 50/50 blended batt is on the right. The babydoll Southdown I have right now is from a fleece purchased at the Great Lakes Fiber Show and is a nice, light-gray color. blended with the bamboo, it becomes even lighter:

 

 

Apple tree bark can be used without a mordant, and in this state will give a rosy-pink color. here is one of the batts fresh out of the dyepot and still draining:

 

 

 

Here are the batts after drying overnight. The pinkish ones are from the apple bark, and the green ones are from the apple leaves. I used alum and cream of tarter as a mordant with the apple leaves. It was hard to capture the color, so there are two pictures, the first one is with a flash:

 

And this one is without a flash:

 

 

I'm going to spin the pink ones up, and then spin the green ones up, and then ply the two colors together in a candy-cane stripe yarn. I have a cute pattern for some little shorty-socks and the pattern was the inspiration for the yarn (if you're a Ravelry user, here's a link to the pattern). I may keep this yarn and make the socks for myself, or I might put the yarn in my Etsy shop. I haven't decided yet.

 

And here is some of the fiber I dyed with the Japanese indigo from my garden, on the left is Polwarth wool roving, and on the right is a superwash merino/Tencel blend:

 





Once those are spun up, they'll most likely be listed in my Etsy shop. I can harvest Japanese indigo leaves every two weeks now through the end of the season (when the plants are finally killed off by frost). I'll keep seeds from this year for next year's garden - which is what I did for this year's garden. If you'd like to buy seeds for your own garden, here is a link to where I purchased the seeds to start my first Japanese indigo garden last year : Fibershed Marketplace

The Japanese indigo isn't too hard to grow, and so far in my two years of growing it,  the deer haven't touched it - which is saying a lot in my deer-infested area. I have about 15 plants this year and those will dye lots and lots of fiber throughout the season.

I'm really happy with the results from my two days of dyeing this past week. Two different colors from one source is terrific - and the good news is that there are a ton of wild apple trees all around me.

Now I just have to get all of this fiber spun up. The thing about using natural dyes that you collect yourself is that you have to take advantage of them when they are in season. They must either be used right away, or collected and stored for later use if that's possible (usually by freezing or drying). At least once you've dyed the fiber, it can wait until you're ready to spin it, that doesn't have to be done right away - and that's a very good thing : )

Naturally dyed Teeswater wool

I've been trying out some natural dyes on about 4 ounces of Teeswater wool roving I had in my stash of fiber. Teeswater is one of the longwool breeds. It produces a long and lustrous fiber.

 

Below is a picture of what the dyes produced on one two-ounce section and four 1/2-ounce sections (click on it for a closer look):  



 

 

 

 

I mordanted all of the fiber with alum and cream of tartar. If you number them 1-5 from left to right, the plants I used for the dyes were:

 

1 - Virginia creeper, produced an almost ashes-of-roses color

 

2 - carrot tops, produced a very light green

 

3 - yarrow tops overdyed with burdock leaves (The yarrow was almost exactly the same color as the carrot tops. The burdock leaves punched it up a tiny notch.), produced a slightly darker green than the carrot tops

 

4 - wild cherry bark collected from twigs and small branches pruned from a tree, produced a lovely root beer brown

 

5 - staghorn sumac bark collected from pruned small branches overdyed with onion skins and a touch of hibiscus, produced a gold with a touch of green

 

I was hoping for an orange from the staghorn sumac bark, but it gave me a sort of brown that was lighter than the wild cherry bark, so I threw a few onion skins and a couple of dried hibiscus petals I usually use for tea into the dyepot and let the dyeing process continue for at least 20 more minutes.

 

I'll spin these all up and ply them together for a two-ply yarn. If I remember to, I'll post a picture of the yarn here later. Okay, it's later and here's the picture:

 

 

 

Spun together, the colors are very subtle and hard to catch in a photo, you may be able to see all of the colors in this one, especially if you click on it to see it larger:

 

 

 

 

 I gathered the plants I used either from my yard (Virginia creeper, wild carrot tops, burdock leaves), from the roadside (sumac), from a nearby stretch of electric company right-of-way wilderness (wild cherry bark), or I had them on hand (onion skins, hibiscus petals). 

 

Most natural dyeing takes only a couple of hours. The fiber can be mordanted while the dye is being extracted from the plant material. This takes about an hour. Then, after the plant material has been strained out of the dyebath, the fiber can be introduced, and left to almost simmer for about another hour. There are a few natural dye materials that can take a few more steps and a bit more time, but, in general, it's terribly easy to produce some really terrific natural colors. To see more posts and more colors, click on my natural dyes label.

Dyeing Cormo wool with dried and frozen marigolds

I recently got my hands on some Cormo wool top. Cormo sheep produce a nice, soft wool and I've been dying to get some and spin it up.

I had a small amount of dried marigolds, and a large amount of frozen marigolds from my garden and I decided to use some of these to give about four ounces of the wool a nice marigold yellow color (you can see another, more in depth, post about dyeing wool with marigolds here). Here's the wool in the dye pot:

And here it is right out of the dye pot before rinsing:

 

 

It looks like there's still a lot of color in the dyepot, so I think I'll mordant four ounces of Polwarth wool and toss it in there to take up what's left. Polwarth is one of my favorite wools - soft and cushy. I'm planning on someday making a cardigan for myself out of Polwarth. I haven't found the exact right pattern yet, though, and I'm still thinking about the colors - I think walnut brown will be in there for sure.

 

I'm thinking that Cormo will become a new favorite, too. Here are the two rovings hanging up to dry, the Cormo, first in the pot, is on the right, and Polwarth, taking up the last of the dye in the second dip, is on the left:

 

It's always nice to have dyed rovings waiting to be spun. With these two, I think my total of dyed rovings waiting to be spun comes to somewhere around seven.

Dyeing with lichen



On a walk this morning I found a small piece of lichen that had fallen off of a tree. Knowing that lichens can be used to dye with, with a wonderful, and surprising, range of colors, I pocketed it and brought it home.

 

At home, I plunked it in a small pot with about a cup of water (it was  a small piece, about 2inches x 1 inch). I simmered it for about 10 or 15 minutes and it produced an orange/yellow color.

 

In the picture below is the piece of lichen after the simmering process. It had originally been pale, dusty green in color:

 

 

 

I added a slight pinch of alum and an even slighter pinch of cream of tartar to the color pot as mordant, and then tossed in a swatch of some type of white wool yarn that I had on hand. I simmered the 4" x 2" swatch for another 10 or 15 minutes, until most of the color had been taken up by the wool.

 

Below, you can see the dyed swatch next to the limp, wet, piece of lichen:

 

 

 

What a surprising color from a bit of lichen! I've never dyed with lichens before, but if the opportunity arises to gather lichens in larger amounts, I'll certainly plunk them into the dye pot.