Felting and Fiber Studio

This summer I’ve been playing with a lot of natural dyes with the help of Cathy (Luvswool).  This is the third in my series of natural dyeing experiments.

As with the other dyeing sessions all the silk and wool rovings were mordanted with alum potassium sulfate.  I used the same silk habotai, silk gauze, silk organza, merino and corriedale roving and wool yarn as I did in my previous experiments.

I started with cutch which was in powder form.

The colors for silk and wool were pretty much the same gold peach except for the the organza which seemed to soak up all the color.

I decided that I wouldn’t use a modifier with the Cutch because I had enough browns and goldens.

So, I moved on to rhubarb liquid extract.

The resulting colors were also in the peach/gold family.

A couple of years ago Cathy and I had an indigo dyeing day.  I had a piece of dark crimped silk left over and decided to use this as a modifier for the second rhubarb batch.

I thought perhaps I’d get a muted green, but here’s what I did get:

There is a hint of green, but it’s not obvious in these pics. the silk gauze and habotai closest to a light turquoise.  The organza is dusky turquoise blue.  The wool is more of a baby blue.

Here is the indigo silk piece after being used as a modifier.  Still a nice indigo color.

Have you done any natural dyeing this season?