Solar Dyeing

Bottles for Solar Dyeing

You may remember that I had a go at natural dyeing with Rhubarb, Dandelions and Forget-Me-Nots a while ago.  Well, now I've had a go at solar dyeing.  This is the same sort of thing but takes much longer, is all done in bottles or jars and uses the sun as the heat source.  

Dandelion Bottle
In this bottle, I put the dandelion remains from my natural dyeing, some boiling water and a piece of calico fabric that had been mordanted with light soy milk.  A mordant is a dye fixative.  It helps bind the dye to a fabric to make it more colourfast and can affect the resulting colour. (The boiling water made the plastic bottle collapse a bit into a slightly bent shape)  After a couple of days, I topped the bottle up with some fresh dandelion heads and left it out in the sun for about 7 weeks.

Dandelion Mulch

Bottle with addition of fresh dandelion heads

Forget-Me-Not Bottle
This bottle had fresh Forget-Me-Not flower heads, some rusty screws and bolts,  hot water and unmordanted calico fabric.  After a few days I topped the bottle up with some distilled vinegar, gave it a shake and left it out in the sun also for about 7 weeks.  I added some linen yarn, that had been washed but otherwise untreated, about half way through.  I hoped the rusty screws and vinegar would act as a mordant here.

Fresh Forget-Me-Not Flower Heads

Dark Red Rose Petals & Leaves Bottle

Another bottle contained some dark red rose petals and rose leaves from the same plant, warm water and washed wool and linen yarns.  The yarns had been washed to remove any dressing.  This was left for about 5 weeks.  I thought the rose leaves might contain enough tannin to act as a mordant here.

Bottle with Rose Petals & Leaves

Red Onion Skins Jar

To this jar I added red onion skins, warm water and some washed wool & linen yarn.  This jar was left for 3 weeks.

Red Onion Skins Jar

Results

When I finally decided to empty all the bottles out, the dandelion mixture smelt terrible and had done very little...

Dandelion Results

The forget-me-not fabric and yarn had gone a nice grey colour with darker patches which I think this was largely due to the screws, bolts and vinegar...

 

Forget-Me-Nots With Screws & Bolts

The rose petals and leaves had produced a promising pale orange wool yarn and pink linen yarn...

Rose Petals & Leaves Results

whilst the red onion jar had the most vivid colours of all, with a deep orange wool yarn and deep pink linen yarn...

Red Onion Results

After getting everything out of the jars and rinsing off the plant matter, all the fabric and yarns were washed.  The yarns from the red onion jar needed most washing to get rid of the onion smell as I had put a few bits of onion in the jar with the skins.  After washing a lot of the vibrant colour had gone and none of the pink was left at all...

 

Dandelion Results

Forget-Me-Nots Results

Rose Petal & Leaf Results

Red Onion Results

You can see a small amount of the original fabric and yarn against the dyed results to show the change.  Apart from the dandelions, which I think were completely spent, all the results were interesting, although I was sorry to lose the pinks from the linen yarn from the rose petals and leaves and the red onion skins. All the linen yarns came out in different neutral shades from pale grey (Forget-Me-Nots) to beige (rose petals and leaves) to ivory (red onion skins).  The wool yarn was quite yellow from the red onion skins and much paler from the rose petals and leaves.

I have since bought a couple of books to find out more and hope to have better results in future!

Dyeing with Dandelions

Dandelions au naturel

Having had some success with my rhubarb leaf dyeing, I decided to have a go with dandelions as there seemed to be acres of them about.  I set about picking all the dandelions in our allotment and some from the neighbouring allotment - with permission of course - thanks, Alison!

Collecting dandelions at the allotment

Here's what they looked like after picking...

Dandelions after picking

and the next day when I'd pulled just the heads off and put them in the dye pan...

Dandelions in the pan

I had a little more weight in dandelion heads than in fabric but not a lot and certainly not twice the weight of fabric in dandelion heads.

The fabrics I chose to dye were some wool yarn, wool blanket and cotton calico.  They were soaked overnight in soy milk which I had read acted as a mordant for cotton fibres.  A mordant is a dye fixative.  It helps bind the dye to a fabric to make it more colourfast and can affect the resulting colour.  For example, mordants may intensify the dye colour.  Alum was recommended as a mordant for wool but I didn't have any of that so I soaked them all in the soy milk (1 part soy milk to 4 parts water).  I could only get light soy milk.  I don't think this worked as well as ordinary soy milk would have.  Also, I didn't dry the fabric before putting it in the dye bath. I just wrung it out tightly.

Fabrics to dye

To make the dye bath, I covered the dandelions with water and simmered them for an hour and then removed the plant matter by straining.  The remaining liquid formed the dye bath to which I added the wrung out fabric.  My pan was aluminium as this was all I had. Ideally you would use a non reactive pan made out of stainless steel.   I simmered the dye bath for about an hour, during which I added a few rusty nails as nothing much seemed to be happening.  I thought this might help as you can use iron as a mordant too.  However, the recipe for an iron based mordant involves soaking some iron objects in 2 parts water to one part vinegar solution for a couple of weeks until it goes a rusty orange colour.  Dropping a few nails in the dye bath late on in the process was therefore unlikely to have a great effect.

Dyebath in action

I left the dye bath to cool overnight...

After cooling overnight

The following day I rinsed out the materials, washed them and hung them up to dry.  Here are the results together with a little sample of the original fabric to show the colour change...

Before and after

I was expecting a pale yellow colour but got a beige colour on the calico and a deeper more yellowy beige on the blanket and yarn.  There were some darker, discoloured patches where the materials had come into direct contact with the nails.

Results of dandelion dyeing

It was quite an interesting result and I don't know if I overheated the dyebath which resulted in a more neutral colour than expected. I would also probably have got a better result if I'd been more careful with the mordanting process and used more dandelion heads.
 
Some helpful websites for natural dyeing and mordants include House Sparrow Fine Nesting's blog on How to Dye with Dandelions, Natural Dyes from Your Flower Garden from Fix.com. and Fiber Artsy & Craftsy's Iron Mordant recipe.