After celebrating Christmas with some family and friends, I went out the the glass house and looked at my jars of cool water dyeing - it did not feel particularly cool! And the colour of the fabric was no longer purple, it had started to look grey, like
the fabric I had boiled up in the pot. I suspect I should have taken it out of the jars yesterday or the day before. But I didn't, so that is that.
I threw out the flowers that were steeping in the jars and washed out the fabric. It is more green than grey, very strange. I don't know why I have this lovely shade of green, but I was quite happy to see it, it is very pretty, it is just unlike any other colours I have
previously obtained from the hollyhock dyeing.
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| It looks rather grey in the photo but is much greener in real life. I suppose it is a greenish grey, or a greyish green. |
I still have some fabric scraps in the weak dye bath, I will have to rinse them out tomorrow. I have been amazingly unscientific about all this, even for me, so I have no idea what it will look like. A surprise in the making.
2 comments:
I wonder if you used a mordant to help hold the pigments in the cloth? I find vinegar and/or salt usually work well
I used some alum on all the lots I have done this week, so I am getting greys and grey-greens. I think the heat takes the purple out. I will have to try some more on one of our cool days, before it heats up again. Or wait till it cools down again. No hurry, I need some more flowers to fall off the plant. And I need to think of something to use the fabric for!
I think I used salt on the ones I did last year, maybe that has something to do with the different colour also. I could look it up but it is a lazy summer day and I can't be bothered.
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