Eco-Dying Experiment

This week I took some time to experiment with eco-dying. This is dying with natural substances like plants and bugs. I didn't use bugs but I did gather some plants from my garden to use.

I took out some of my white cotton fabric and first boiled it in vinegar and water for an hour to make the fabric ready to take the plant dyes and make them fairly colour fast so they wouldn't wash out of the fabric.

Apparently silk takes the dyes better than cotton but this time I just used the cotton.

I laid out the fabric on my deck and placed the plants on top of it.

This one has goldenrod, chestnut leaves and mountain ash leaves and some pink mandevilla blossoms on it.

I then rolled and bundled the fabric with the plants inside into small tight packages and kept them together with elastics. Then they were placed in a colander above a pot of water in order to steam them for 1 hour.

After the hour I placed each bundle in a ziploc bag and put them outside in the sun and left them out there all night to continue steeping.

In the morning I unwrapped the bundles.

The dying is very subtle as you can see but the different plants gave me different results. The bundle with the chestnut, mountain ash, golden rod and mandeville was a very light result.

Bundle#2 had goldenrod, mountain ash leaves, petunia blossoms, verbena blossoms and geranium blossoms. This one turned out the best with some nice pinks and purples in it.

You can see the pattern of the mountain ash leaves in the section above. 

The third bundle was just brown leaves that had already fallen from some of the trees in the yard. These also gave more colour than in the first bundle.

I was hoping I would get some distinct leaf prints and blossom prints but I am happy I got some colour on the fabric. I will have to do some more experimenting and perhaps studying on this technique.

I am not certain what I'll use these little samples for but I am sure something will come to me.