Elaine Duncan

Today I dyed using the flowers of the dyer’s coreopsis.  Last evening I harvested the rest of the blooms from the plants and added them to the collection of frozen ones I had been cutting all summer.  I simmered them for about an hour, then left in the pot overnight.  This morning I removed the plant heads/blossoms and strained the remaining liquid adding enough water to cover the skeins of yarns.  I immersed the alum mordanted wool skeins (one natural white colour, one natural grey and one natural brown).  I brought the pot up to simmer and kept it at that temperature for about an hour.  The exhaust bath also gave a beautiful strong golden colour although not as dark as the first dye bath using two natural white coloured wool skeins.  You can see the results in the photos.  I was very pleased with the intensity of colour.

Dyer's Coreopsis

The dyepot of Dyer's Coreopsis

The resulting colours

I planted a natural dye garden this spring:  Weld, Woad, Dyer’s Coreopsis, and Marigolds.  I already have three tubs of Madder as well.  I cut the leaves of the weld–they were in the form of rosettes and had not flowered yet.  I have included photos of the weld in the dyepot and the resulting skeins of yarn.  I was able to dye 4 - 2 ounce skeins and get very good concentration of colour.  The skein on the right was from the first dye bath and is more green-yellow.  The subsequent dyebaths gave very clear intense yellows.  I just cut the leaves,immersed them in water, simmered for an hour, left in over night and strained them out in the morning when I proceeded to dye.  I was very happy with the results. 

Weld leaves in the dyepot

Weld dyed wool

I held Natural Dye Days at my place this month of August.  Yellow day was August 4th where we dyed wool yarns with Fustic as an extract, Osage Orange in sawdust form and Tansy flower heads collected from my neighborhood.    On Red Day, August 11th, we dyed with Madder from dried roots given to me by a friend, Cochineal from Peru and from Mexico, and Lac purchased ground from Maiwa Handprints.  And lastly on Blue day, August 18th, we dyed with natural indigo and synthetic indigo, also overdyeing the yellows and reds to get purples and greens.  I have included a few photos so you can see the wonderful rainbow of colours we got.

Tansy flowerheads in the dye pot

On the Clothesline

The students and their results of dyeing