25 minutes

The one productive, artistic thing I did today: 25 minutes of hand stitching on "Going to Seed." From 8:15am to about 8:40. The rest of the day was a total wash, since it's hard to feel great about six hours spent dealing with email, and another several hours dealing with various interpersonal problems.

But yesterday, ah, bliss! A day of quiet. Lots of puttering around, and a goodly amount of sewing. A lovely breakfast. And even though the stuffed squash I attempted for dinner was just meh, I honestly went to bed feeling peaceful.

I probably shouldn't have watched the Frontline segment on retirement funds. Not terribly reassuring.

But maybe in the morning, I'll get another 25 minutes...

pretties

New views, "old" news: left to right,

cotton/silk blend with elm leaf tannin, rust dye, runner bean flowers (ice flower method), and an elm/something else mixture.

The great elm-on-elm experiment, utilizing a spray bottle and dupioni silk. 

Wheee!

I just won a drawing for a bunch of free beads in the colorway of my choosing, from Sweet Pea Path! Lucky lucky lucky me, I'm a lucky sonofagun.... :)

What makes my fingers purple?

After some investigation I've determined this: A distilled (boiled down) leaf tannin will, once soaked into the cloth, hot or cold, react to the cold-soaked elm leaf mixture (which may include alum, I forget!) by turning from light brown to dark purple. This shade when dry has lightened by maybe 50%. I did a number of experiments today, on both dupioni silk and a cotton-silk blend. The dupioni had been boiled in leaf tannin (from a mixture of elm, gingko and caltalpa) as a bundle with the leaves wrapped inside. This dried overnight. The silk blend was untreated. No combination of known dye ingredients on my desk produced the purple results on the silk blend, but the dupioni purpled right away in response to the elm mixture. I soaked another piece of silk in what was left of the boiled mixture, and prayed it with the cold elm -- it purpled immediately. So, questions that remain include -- did I add alum to the cold mixture? I really should take better notes. And, was the mordant from the boiling pot a factor?

As to the second question, I'm thinking the pot was not a factor. I suspect it was iron, for one thing, and for another I believe I produced essentially the same results a week ago and used a different pot, I suspect aluminum.

So, while my cuticles are BLACK, I have learned something interesting!

On the right, the dupioni silk drying in the window. Middle, a piece of similarly treated antique organza. At left, a piece of silk soaked in the runner bean flower dye, a delicate pinkish-orange. 

witchy woman

What happens when you experiment with organic dyes sans gloves? Well, there's always the possibility that your fingers will be stained black and blue. The good news is that, if you aren't rinsing your hands between handling of different projects, you might see unexpected dye reactions on your fingers that clue you in to potential combinations and reactions on your fabric -- a heads-up if you'd like to avoid them, or an interesting opportunity, depending on your point of view. The bad news is that you might wind up with zombie fingers. Though I prefer to think of this as a sign of my inner female sorcerial powers :-)  You know, combining plants and natural compounds to create a witch's brew that will transform ordinary dupioni silk fabric into something reflecting the wondrous complexity of Nature. Magic! Yeah, not so much. My fingers do look very Wicked Witch of the West however. Good thing my nails aren't an inch longer...

in more or less chronological order...

Some folding, some hapa-zome...autumn leaves from dogwood at Breezy Point...blackberries and lime, willow leaf tanin...all on recycled white cotton. 

Hapa-zome flowers and grasses from the summer trip to Lake Mille Lacs, more blueberries and blackberries, more of that reddish-tan willow (whole branches with their leaves soaked in vinegar and water), some over-dyes (I took no notes, thought I'd remember it all, ha!) 

Hibiscus tea! Alkanet root! All on silk. 

A walk through the neighborhood with my son, picking up leaves of red and orange: maple, dogwood, oak leaves. 

Boiled first in a bath of cream of tartar... some pinks, lots of greens and browns. A few of the cottons were pulled out after that first boil, but the less impressive pieces went back in the pot...

And you'll see the results one posting below...

Meanwhile, more cottons into the mason jars, for cold baths of walnut husk, maple leaves, willow, the liquid in the jars growing darker and darker with time. I think I added alum to one of the jars. 

weeks of bundling, rusting, experimentation

A wet piece of cotton...looking like silk...first boiled in cream of tartar, then boiled in alkanet solution, with maple and oak leaves in the bundle... And after all that I wrapped it around my favorite chunk of steel pipe...there may have been a vinegar and scarlet runner bean-flower bath too...so the iron was a post-mordant. 

This was an antique linen pillowcase. I rusted a scrap, leaving it white with spots...then bathed it in the vinegar/runner bean solution. The areas saturated with rust darkened to purple, but the untouched white areas took on the pale orangish-pink of the dye. 

Some other rust-dyed pieces, silk and cotton, mostly wrapped around pieces of rusted iron.

The purples on the two pieces above appeared in seconds, where once the rust-dyed cloth looked like the topmost scrap in the photo, after dipping in the vinegar/runner bean jar. 

A long piece of linen, wrapped and re-wrapped around the pipe over many days. This is about 50 inches long, and 9 inches wide. 

Silk and cotton...multiple baths...maple and oak...I lose track. 

A little bit of what I'm up to

I have a ton of fabric pieces in cotton and silk that I want to show off, rust-dyed and botanical, but first it's time to play catch-up. I'm experimenting a lot with new organics -- elm and maple leaves, willow, birch bark, hibiscus tea bags, even tomatillo hulls...But the blackberry/blueberry experiment, with and without lime (didn't have the alum yet) turned out some very fugitive colors. You can see in the second photo where a turquoise-looking stick is resting -- well, that faded out to a greyish tone in just 24 hours. Not that I have a problem with grey.

I've finally added powdered lime and alum to my arsenal, as well as some alkanet. I have busily built a small library of flosses and threads to match some of the hand-dyed fabrics in the current work-in-progress. 

This odd little bundle, the preview of lovely rusted patterns to come...Give me another day to take good shots of the results.

Autumn in Minnesota is so full of wonderful forms. 

Autumn has come, and with it a whole host of new elements to gather and "pickle" to see what I can see. Pictures coming soon...I have two types of willow (bark and leaves) stewing (in a slow, cold-process sort of way), too see if they really do produce a vinegar-like acidity that would be useful as a dye enhancer...Some pretty red Maple and Dogwood leaves together that are gradually tinting their water a delicate orangish-pink...The skins of tomatillos in vinegar and water, which are a beautiful bright green, may or may not produce a worthy dye...plus there's Birch bark (gathered on the ground), some black walnut/red onion peel combined, and maybe one or two other jars a-brewing. India Flint says the longer you wait, the better the results, and I'm learning to take her advice there seriously as I watch my natural dyed cloths progress from pale and delicate shades to more robust patterns and marks. The lime/blueberry mixture smelled AWFUL when I poured it out, but man, did those swatches look cool... Like I said, more photos soon!

Blues blues blues

I've ordered a pound of alum for dyeing from my co-op, and lucked into some pickling lime this morning as well, so I think I'm ready to work on some true blues! I need to save myself some links, but you can look at them too. See below.
http://waysofthewhorl.wordpress.com/2011/04/12/natural-dyeing-take-3-black-beans/
http://wildcolours.co.uk/html/blue_dyes.html
http://www.spin-knit-dye.com/