Anna
is designing a child's backpack on a tiger theme for her latest textile
project. She wants the fabric to have a natural background colour for
the repeated tiger stripes lino block print. So she experimented with
three readily available dyes: tea, onion skins and tumeric.
She
decided after making the first round of tests that she wanted to dye
her raw calico with a combination of tumeric and onion skin.
She used my biggest pot and boiled the fabric in the concoction for about half an hour.
It turned out a lovely rich colour.
That is a great colour! So what was your recipe? -- how many onion skins did it take? Does this mean you eat onions in everything for the next few weeks?
ReplyDeleteIt really is a lovely colour. Anna and I stocked up on onions from the bulk display in the grocery store and put in as many loose onion skins as we could find. Then when we got home we peeled any loose skins off and chopped up three of the onions to freeze for later. Anna says she put in the skins of about 6 onions and about 7 level teaspoons of tumeric for this batch. She boiled this in the water with the 3/4 meter of calico for about 1/2 hour. Then rinsed and dried. I used the water after that for a selection of yarns just to see how the different ones took the colour. Quite a lot of difference from bright clear yellow to an earthy yellow brown.
ReplyDeleteHi Anna Natural dying is a bit of a passion of mine, but I dont think I ever got such a rich deep yellow as this, it looks great. Have you tried dipping the fabric in either a solution of very diluted white wine vinegar or one of washing soda afterwards. This changes the colour,sometimes just a bit and sometimes dramatically, all very exciting to see what happens.
ReplyDeleteRuth sent me a small sample of the yellow, and it was so strong and gorgeous. Just right for a tiger theme!
ReplyDelete