Wednesday 10 April 2013

Vegetable Dyes Mordanted with Alum



Onion peel is great fun. You do not need 100g per 100g of yarn though! Even the peel from 1 or 2 onions will give quite a deep colour. As you can see, red onions give a browner colour, whereas normal onions give a more golden colour. 

I have also tried cold dyeing with onion peel (below).

This definitely needs an attempt 2! I think a deeper colour (possibly more yellow than green) might be the result of a cold dyebath.




Compared to the amazing colour of the dyebath, these colours were quite disappointing! The dye looks amazing, it's a vibrant purple/blue colour, but just doesn't seem to stick to the yarn very well. 


Does this count as a vegetable? I'm not sure but it had to go somewhere! My boyfriend bought me a bunch of roses (aw) and I didn't want to throw them away when they died so I made a dye. Each dyebath used the heads of 6 roses. I won't bother with a hot dyebath again, because the colour is so similar to the brown from red onion peel, but the colour from the cold dyebath is quite a sweet lavender purple so if I'm lucky enough to get more roses (hint hint) I may do it again.


Thanks for reading!
- Kate



2 comments:

  1. It's great to see your notes and samples - such a good idea.

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  2. I didn't know that you could use so many different fruit and veg to dye wool. I experimented with beetroot using citric acid and got reds and oranges depending on whether or not the wool had a sheen like polished silk, my vinegar experiments also produced reds and oranges as well as a very bright yellow, I only got pastel colours from them when I used the beetroot dyes cold, the citric acid dye was darker than the vinegar dye when cold, but all in all I was happy with the results. It was good to hear you at the guild meeting in April, I hope that you can visit us again one day.

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