Natural dyeing with hollyhocks that were not frozen

As I was getting ready to do more dyeing using the frozen flowers, I accidentally crumbled some of the dried flower that I had just picked up from the ground onto one of my pieces of silk.  The silk was damp as it had been soaking in an alum solution and the colour just rushed out from the crumbled bits. It was amazing to see.
Of course I couldn't resist that - I had to see if it would stay in the fabric.  So I laid out some of the silk and crumbled the dried flowers and some of the fresh petals that had fallen off (I'm still not picking them off the plant, there is no need, there are so many flowers) along the length of the silk and rolled it up.

Then I got all confused, as I have already said (I'm blaming the hot weather), and put the fabric in a jar with the leftover alum solution.  I think I had intended to just let it lie and dry out in a plastic bag, as I did with onion skins and vinegar recently.

However, I didn't.  So it has been in the jar, in the glasshouse, for three days.  The water changed colour over that time, giving me hope that something good would be happening.

Today I took it out and rinsed it.  I was very excited to see the different colours.  The dried petals have given quite a darker colour and there are parts that have taken on the redder fresh petals.  The dye has stayed, not much came out in the rinse at all.

I was interested to see that some of the petals had become quite transparent, the colour had leached out.

I did this at the same time as the frozen flowers that went mouldy. There was no mould with this lot, perhaps because it was in an airtight jar or perhaps it had something to do with the alum solution. I am not a scientist so don't know. I am just happy that there was no staining that I didn't want!

Just in time!

I decided that I should rinse out my silk today, the lot that is soaking with the fresh and the frozen hollyhock flowers.  I was just in time!!  The hollyhock petals that were in the bag, sitting on top of the folded silk pieces, were starting to go mouldy. There was also a little bit of mould floating around on top of the water. The colour of the muslin had changed too, it was blueish (where it wasn't mouldy brown).

You can see a picture of it before the mould set in here.

This is the lot that I had put into fresh water.  I had left the hollyhocks in the bag and let the whole lot soak for three days.  It was in the glasshouse, in days that are consistently in the high 20 and low 30 degrees (C).

I was quite surprised to see the different patterns on the silk, from the folding.  I had really expected that the dye would have soaked through in three days, especially with the chiffon.  I had only folded them and placed the frozen petal bag on top, so no clamping, etc. The mould doesn't seem to have stained the fabric either - as I said, Just In Time!
Not that much dye rinsed out, which was pleasing in these days of very little rain.

You can just see the hollyhock, still valiantly flowering,  in the background.

The silk is all out on the line drying at the moment.  That should take about 10 minutes.

Well the 10 minutes are up and I have brought them inside.
Here they are without the sun shining on them, the satin tends to be hard to photograph.

The front piece was a small piece of pongee that did get some mould on it.  It takes the colour up more strongly.

The front and back of the satin, the colour looks stronger on the back.

There may have been a little staining from the mould, it is hard to tell and, obviously, doesn't detract from the patterns.