cookin up some fun

[teriann]

While I was out gathering dye materials I came across some ripe pokeberris. I don't expect the colors from the berries to be light fast but I couldn't resist cooking up a pot.
In this picture you can see gallon jars of black willow, birch, summac and some kind of mystery tree bark that I will be cooking up in the next couple of days. In front of the jars are browns from black walnut hulls, a light gray from a black walnut exhaust bath with iron, salmon and burgundy from the pokeberries w/alum, blue gray and teal from copper scrubbies in ammonia and oranges and yellow from Red Dahlia flowers w/alum.

[Karen]

Gorgeous colors

[jufergu]

Wow, these look wonderful. I do a lot of tea staining. So many of the herbal teas have interesting color. Don't know how they would work with wool.

[koffipot]

Gorgeous autumn colours! I'd like to be more adventurous and use barks, berries etc. but they all need different mordants - then I get confused! I'm easily confused

[lyn]

You've achieved some scrummy colours!

[zed]

Those colours are gorgeous
I bet those pots smell interesting

[Shepherdess]

very cool colours.

[MTRuth]

These are wonderful Teriann! You're our mad scientist ;D

[Tess]

Great range of colours. can't wait for my decking out back off the studio to be completed, I've been wanting to do some natural sun dying for ages now, just need a spot to leave some jars to brew.

[teriann]

Thanks!
Actually none of these smell bad except the copper in ammonia.
It's done without any heat and kept in a plastic container with a tight lid so the fumes don't get out.
The rest I cook up small amounts, about a gallon of dye bath and 1-4oz of wool in a small slow cooker on low. Most of them smell pretty good. The pokeberries require a lot of vinegar so it smelled like I was making pickles.
The only mordant I use is pickling alum. I use a 1.9 oz container to 10 oz of wool.
I avoid things that require fermentation... they can have a wicked smell.
And if I have any doubt I use the burner on my gas grill outdoors.

Ruth, my husband jokes about the time I spend in my laboratory cooking up monsters...

[Tess]

I love that muted delicate shade of green at the front Teriann, how was this colour acheived?

[teriann]

This is one of the colors from a copper solution made by dissolving the copper off of a copper mesh pot scrubber by soaking it in ammonia and water.
In this case the wool was soaked in a strong copper/ammonia solution.
The solution turned the wool a bluish gray color.

Then it was rinsed with vinegar and water. The stronger the vinegar or the longer the rinse the lighter and more green the color gets.

The blue/gray mohair on the left of the photo had just a quick rinse,
In the center of the photo is more mohair rinsed a second time and the wool on the right was left in the rinse even longer.

I've read you can also do this with oxidized (dull and dark) copper pipe or coins and vinegar and water. But I haven't done it myself