Home Dyeing

Dye pots 7/26:
Blueberries - frozen - cool browns
Cranberries - dried - light tan-salmon
Wild Blackberries - fresh - purples, browns with a tint of purple

Cranberries

Wild Berries

Dye pots 7/27:
Rosemary - fresh sprigs - greens

Week 5 of Spinning and Dyieng Class

Dye pots at school, 7/25:
Madder - Root - Salmons and browns. Our book showed red, purple and orange.
Sanderswood - browns
Oxalis - dingy yellow
Annatto - seed - bright orange and rust colors. This seed is used to color cheddar cheese.
Red Cabbage - pale blue and green. Class thinks it didn't get hot enough or the bath wasn't acidic enough.

Dye pots at home, 7/25:
Cedar - bark - pale, dull tans and browns
Sycamore - bark - gold/brown
Bougainville - fresh bracts (the colorful part) - yellow and green. I used red bracts and the water was bright red-orange.
Flowering Plum Tree - fresh leaves - pretty dark green and some purple-green colors
KoolAid - Black Cherry - dark red, Grape - almost black, Lemonade - yellow, Orange - orange, Pink lemonaide - light pink

Bougainville
Flowering Plum
Sycamore I think, could be the cedar

Home Dyeing

Since I missed the second class and there have been outings that have taken away from dyeing time, so yesterday I tried to fill in some of the gaps that are needed in our sample book that is due at the end of summer semester.

Turmeric - Root, powdered - Yellows and browns
Chamomile - Fresh and dried - yellows and browns
Green plum tree leaves - fresh - greens
Walnuts - Dried husks - nice range of browns
KoolAid - Tropical Punch - Deep red

Week 4 of Spinning and Dyeing Class

First half of the day was spent at the local county fair watching fleeces being juged. We missed that due to certain circumstances and arrived at school when everyone was coming back.

Dye Pots:
Cutch - heartwood of tree - browns and rusts
Merigold - petals - yellow, orange, brown
Henna - leaves of shrub - tans
Cochineal - Stored fluid from dried insect husks - Pretty pinks and purples
Indigo - leaves of shrub - blues


I also tried to do some synthetic dye on a cotton/spandex blend. It turned out much lighter then I thought it would.

Edit: turns out there where a few steps I wasn't aware of that our teacher left out, like I was supposed too steam/heat it. I might over dye it, I might leave it, I'm still not sure about the color.

Week 3 of Spinning and Dyeing Class

We had an off-campus meeting with the local spinning guild. Our teacher only brought a few wheels and no spindles. I completely forgot to bring my cheap wobbly spindle, so I didn't get to practice spinning and ended up really bored.

I did work on my mohair shawl a bit, and glanced around when the guild had their silent auction.

Our teacher was thinking we'd maybe go back to class after, but most of the students vetoed that. So at when the meeting was over, we came home.

We lost out on a day of dying and me trying to learn how to spin.