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 Forget-Me-Nots

Basket of Forget-Me-Nots

Having had some success with my rhubarb leaf dyeing, and more limited success with dandelions, I decided to have a go with forget-me-nots as this is another plant that we had in abundance in our allotment...

Forget-Me-Nots in the Allotment

Having gathered them, I pulled the flowers off and added them to the dye pan. I had a little more weight in forget-me-not flowers than in fabric but not a lot and certainly not twice the weight of fabric in forget-me-nots which would have been ideal....

Forget-Me-Not Flower Heads in the Dye Pan

Dye Pan Flower Detail

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 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.  I dried the fabric before putting it in the dye bath.

Fabric to Dye

To make the dyebath, I covered the forget-me-nots with water and simmered them for an hour and then removed the plant matter by straining. 

Sieve of Plant Material to be Discarded

The remaining liquid formed the dyebath to which I added the dry 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 dyebath 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.  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 so this intervention was unlikely to have a great effect.

Dye Bath & Fabric

I left the dyebath to cool overnight...

Dye Bath 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 Dyeing Results

I was hoping for a blue colour and when the dye pan started heating up the water was very green so I thought a greeny colour might be a possibility.  However, the outcome was very similar to that of the dandelion dyeing which frankly, was a little disappointing. I may have 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 forget-me-not heads.

Forget-Me-Not Dyed Items

The forget-me-not yarn and blanket were slightly paler in colour than the dandelion dyed pieces and the calico was very similar in colour bit a slightly different shade...

Wool Yarn

Wool Blanket

Calico

Not sure yet what I shall use the fabric and yarn for but interesting to experiment.  Why not have a go with some of your abundant plants?