Next interesting date - 20/6/26

 I suppose there will be another one soon - 26/6/26. I'll try to have done something interesting for then. 

I have done a little more natural dyeing with the hollyhock flowers - got some lovely deep purple but in certain light it looks like a lovely purplish grey, rather dark really - so the flowers can still give quite strong colour. 

I used the leftover fabric from my last lot of mordanting. I have some leftover dye and some more of the mess of flowers that still seem to have colour! I thought that it would definitely be used up in the last lot of dyeing but there is still colour there. 

Waste not, want not - I'll give it a go. 

I'll have to mordant some more pieces of silk - not old clothing this time, some pieces that I bought years ago when I was more into silk painting and natural dyeing. They are all white so I expect the results will be different - hopefully the dye bath will be strong enough to do a good job. 

In the meantime, the soggy flowers are starting to develop mould! Not good. But now that we are finally having some wintry weather I might put the jar outside and hope that the mould slows down. 

I'm hoping to do some mordanting tomorrow and then put it all away till my next small burst of enthusiasm. 

Then I will have to decide what on earth I will use the fabric for! 

Using dried hollyhock petals for natural dyeing

Today I took the silk out of it's plastic bag.  The dye bath looked much darker and so did the silk. I rinsed it out with water, to get rid of the bits of petal.

Looking much darker.

Then I took it inside to have a proper rinse.

So far, so good.

After it had dried, it didn't smell quite right. I decided to do a final rinse with a little bit of vinegar - well, was that a mistake or not?  I am not sure - but a lot of pink dye came out of the fabric, making it less purple and more like the other blue-grey fabric. I don't know why the vinegar did that.  I suppose it is good to have done it myself and not given it to someone who would be disappointed to have the colour change in that way.

I took a close-up photo of it while it was drying the first time, there were little bits that looked yellowish. I think they might have been from the part of the flowers where the petals are held together.  I didn't mean to have them in there but a few managed to be included. 

This photo came out a lot pinker than it was in actuality.

This is the final piece, dried and ready for me to use - for something, one day.