After reading this...
I got to thinking about these...
The giant marigolds that took over the garden.
The flowers were picked and are drying in the green house.
The greens went into the dye pot formy first experiment with natural dye.
Campfire simmered marigold greens...yum...
Then an out of state Instagram friend sent me a treasure map to a stash of poke berries.
They were simmering when I remembered this book...
...which has a section on poke berry dying...
There was some black walnut soup too.Fermented black walnut soup.
Skipping the photos there...
Final results are from top to bottom:
Marigold greens - with Alum mordant heat simmeredMarigold greens exhaust bath - solar dyed with a few walnut hulls and alum. Walnut with Alum mordant (total bust - think there was too much water)Poke berry- dry fiber, no mordant, cold bathPoke berry- vinegar mordant heat simmered
~ All together ~
Pretty fun to dye with finds from the backyard!
Do you have a favorite local natural dye?
~