Sunday 7th March

Today I opened started preparing for some dyeing on Tuesday. I am pre-mordanting cotton, silk and wool in salt water, soy milk, soda ash, vinegar, lemon juice, egg, milk, liquid starch, diet coke (because I had some left over) and alum, rusty water.. I have a series of bottles, jars and pots with little bits of fabric sitting in them.

I opened the rolled up tubes, see above. They are cotton, wool and paj silk and have been rolled up with silver dollar gum leaves inside them. and left over the weekend in a rusty tray. I wanted to see if the Eucalyptus leaves would give their bright red colour without being boiled or steamed. The rusty tray is just to give some background colour.

This is on silk (above)

 

This is on cotton(above)

  

This is on wool. Turns out that the Eucalyptus colour doesn't really take without the heat from boiling or steaming. Although I admit that I could have left them longer than 3 days. They were kept in a hot car and then in the conservatory so were warm but not boiling. They are the same leaves as went bright orange when steamed or boiled (see friday 5th).