A Day of Dyeing

Well after all the prep work Saturday, Sunday was dyeing day.  I had a pound of roving and 320 yards of home spun yarn to play with. My friend, Susie, got here at about 11:00 in the morning. She brought two bags of onion skins which I immediately put in a pot of water and started to boil.

(L to R: Box Elder bark, onion skins, Sow Thistle with some additions-see below, grey wool dyed with Quebracho Red).

Susie is making paper these days so I have been saving the plant material and spent dye baths for her. I dry the vegetable matter on screens and then if it something she thinks is interesting she uses it in her paper.  I had dried the Box Elder bark for Susie, but she said she couldn't use it. After boiling the Sow Thistle, we dried that and it will become part of her paper. I did a second boil on the onion skins and those will be dried for paper as well. I also have boiled red cabbage for her.


We removed the yarn from the Box Elder dye pot where it had been steeping over night.  No more color appeared to develop by letting it stand. The result is a very nice beige color. It was a lot of work for the color, so even though I like it, I probably won't do it again.  Besides, the smell was really awful!

We looked at the jar of sow thistle petals (see 7/20/13). We decided to try to get a bit more color be heating them. I simmered them in a pot for a while and the strained and cooled the liquid. I added the wool and heated it. It looked a lot like the leafy spurge wool, so I added some Cream of Tartar. The pot quickly lost much of its color! I don't understand why that would happen. Any ideas would be appreciated!

I decided that since I had other pots going, I would just play around. I added a cup of Quebracho Red dye bath and a cup of the onion skin dye bath. I let that simmer for a while longer and then cooled the pot. One thing I have learned from the dyeing I have done this summer is that unless you are attempting to get a specific color, you can't make a mistake! I have thought on occasion that I have done something to 'ruin the pot' but so far, I have not come up with a color using natural dye stuff that I don't like!

This is the yarn ready to spin. It turned into a lovely apricot color!

The last experiment for the day was to try dyeing some of my naturally grey wool. I have a fleece that is a beautiful silvery grey. I wanted to use something with a fairly strong color. I still have the dye bath from the first run of Quebracho Red. I decided to try that. At first I was disappointed with the results. It just looked as though it had darkened the yarn. After the yarn was completely dry, I realized that there is some of the salmon color of the Quebracho. It may be hard to see in the photo.

The wool on either side is the wool that was dyed. The wool in the middle is the natural color greywool. It turned out prettier than what it looks in the picture.