Dyeing part 3!

The last 4 colours for my jumper project… light green, blue-green, pink and purple.

For the light green yarn, I soaked 300g black turtle beans in 700 mL water for 6 hours then poured off the juice and added the damp nettle dyed yarn. This was soaked for 1 hour then rinsed and dried giving a lovely grass green yarn, dotted with those nasty black patches!

Once I removed the nettle yarn, I added a skein of undyed mordanted yarn to the bean juice dye bath. I added another 700 mL water to the beans and soaked them for another 6 hours to extract more colour and added this to the dye bath before adding another skein of yarn – these would become my blue-green and purple skeins. The fresh bean juice was noticeably bluer than the older liquid which had turned a more green colour. After soaking overnight, there was a clear difference in the colours of the two skeins (below). The first skein added (RHS) had taken up a more green colour than the second skein added with the fresh juice (LHS). The plan was to over dye one of the blue skeins with avocado to achieve a purple and the other with eucalyptus to achieve blue-green.

To dye with the avocado liquid that had been soaking in water and ammonia for several days, I first simmered the dye liquid with the chopped stones in for 10 minutes or so. After sieving the stones out, I simmered a small sample of mordanted yarn for 10 minutes. This came out a beautiful pale pink so I added the full skein. After simmering for about 45 minutes, I rinsed and dried the skein which was a lovely dusky rose colour.

To get a purple colour I chose the bluest skein from the black bean liquid and rinsed and added it to the avocado dye bath and simmered it for 20 minutes. It came out a sort-of dirty pink so I put it back in the black bean bath for a while until it looked purpler. Much the same treatment was given to the other skein from the bean juice bath except that eucalyptus was used to over dye it before another spell in the bean juice to re-blueify it.

Very unscientific!

The results are shown below:

1. Nettle, alum mordant, over dyed with black bean

2. Black bean, alum mordant, 15 h, old juice

3. Black bean, alum mordant, 10 h, fresh juice

4. Avocado, alum mordant, 10 mins

5. Avocado, alum mordant, 45 mins

6. Black bean, alum mordant, over dyed with avocado

7. Black bean, alum mordant, over dyed with avocado, then black bean

8. Black bean, alum mordant, over dyed with eucalyptus, then black bean

Here’s a look at the finished skeins! Although the blue-green and purple yarns did not give as vibrant a colour as I would have liked, they are distinct and subtly beautiful colours so I’mm happy with what I’ve got. If I were to repeat the attempt I think that I would dye yellow or pink first then over dye with the black bean as the blue doesn’t appear to survive the simmering process terribly well. Well, that’s the beauty of natural dyeing I suppose! You can never be sure how it’ll work out!

And finally a look at all the beautiful colours ready for me to begin knitting! I love this picture a ridiculous amount! 

First dyeing results!

After sitting in the dye for 6 days, the colours I obtained from the oak galls and black beans are revealed!

From top:

1. Oak galls, no mordant

2. Oak galls, no mordant, iron modifier

3. Black turtle beans, alum mordant

4. Black turtle beans, acidic modifier

For my jumper project, I was aiming for a dark grey/brown for the main colour using an iron modifying solution on the oak gall dyed skeins. Unfortunately, I did not have enough of the iron solution and adding more to the bath with the yarn afterwards resulted in a patchy colouring. I’ve decided that I quite like the effect though so we’ll see how it looks once it’s knitted up!

For the blue skein, I decided that the colour of the skein straight from the dye vat was rather more greeny than I wanted. I had read somewhere that the colour could be modified to give a more purple blue by a vinegar bath so I added 4 tsp vinegar to a tub of water and added the rinsed skein. No immediate colour change was seen but after a while, it was clear that there was a slight improvement.

Hopefully the weather will improve and I’ll be able to get decent photos of how the actual skeins have turned out!

I’ve tried a few more dye materials today and will post about those results soon!