Day 8 Artist in residence - natural dyes continued

Eucalptus dyes
Someone once told me that silver dollar gum tree leaves gave a good orange dye. When I tried it years ago I just got yellow. Now I have discovered why. I added alum as a mordant but I Eucalyptus does not need a mordant at all.

Here is what  we did to get this extraordinary terracotta red colour.

These were leaves from a gum tree which is near Tawa Station. It is one of those gum trees which have blue grey leaves which are short and rounded. This tree doesn't have the really round leaves of the silver dollar gum but slightly pointy leaves. Using a stainless steel pot, fill it about half way with eucalyptus leaves and then cover with water and bring to the boil. Add wool or silk and simmer for 2-3 hours. In this case the pot was taken off the boil at the end of the day and the fabric was left in the pot. It became an even stronger colour over night. I just think it is amazing!

The Eucalyptus leaves give up their colour when they are heated. Some of the other people got amazing pink prints from this tree by wrapping the leaves up in wool or silk and boiling or steaming them. The prints are quite a lolly pink - amazing from a greenish leaf.

We also tried boiling up kowhai pods. We added iron sulphate as a mordant and it dyed bits of old woolen blanket a really dark army green. You can buy iron sulphate from the garden centre. I think it is used for killing moss on lawns.

Comfrey dyed the wool bright yellow with alum as the mordant. Next time we will try using copper as (hopefully) this should give us a lighter green.

Most plants give brown or yellow so it is nice to find some that give greens and reds.
About 10 years ago Prue Townsend gave me a bag of lichen which had been in the collection of Oriel Hoskin until she died. I tried using a bit of the lichen at the time and didn't get much of a result but decided to have another go. It looks like a native New Zealand lichen called Sticta Coronata but it doesn't turn pink when acetone is dropped on it, which is a sign of Sticta C. Apparently what you do with Sticta is you boil it up and keep changing the water. You dye fabric in each change of water and as you keep going you keep getting different colours. At the moment I am still at the brown stage. See below.

 The first boiling gave me the tan colour, then I changed water, the second lot of water gave the pale beige at the top of the photo. The third change of water gave the dark brown - as the Americans say 'go figure'!
If you are trying this at home, don't use pots that you are going to cook food in, and preferably cook outside the house as the smell of eucalyptus or other plants cooking, can be quite nauseating.

Artist Res Day 5- natural dyeing

On Thursday I showed the students the traditional (and not terribly eco friendly) way of dyeing with natural dyes. Use a stainless steel pot, put in about half a pot of boiling water and about a third of a pot of plant material. Boil for 30 mins and then add a mordant such as alum or Iron suphate. Put in different bits of fabric and simmer for several hours.
Here are some of the results. This is not a new technique for me so I haven't gone into it in much detail.

Fabric dyed with New Zealand flax seed pods with iron Sulphate as the mordant. from left to right is wool, tussah silk, paj silk, nylon, cotton.

NZ flax again with alum as the mordant.Wool, tussah silk, paj silk, nylon, cotton.

This time we used Ivy leaves and alum as the mordant. Wool, silk and the whitish bit is viscose. I think the students gave up on cotton as it didn't take the dye well (this is normal).

This is all stuff I have done before so no surprises but Deb Donnelly, the textile tutor then showed the class how to do Eco prints using Eucalyptus leaves. She learnt this from India Flint. 

Wool blanket wrapped around a plastic pipe with Eucalyptus leaves tucked between the layers. The leaves were from a silver dollar gum. I have always been told that the silver dollar gum gives red dye but I have never found that before. Turns out that is because I have always used a mordant such as alum which turns the colour yellow. Eucalyptus doesn't need a mordant at all.

 

When the pipe is unwrapped you can see the prints of the leaves. The above piece was wrapped around the pole then string was tied around it to keep the layers tightly together and then it was simmered in tap water for 5 hours.

This slightly quieter piece was steamed in the same pot of plain tap water.

There are more bits and pieces that are waiting to be unwrapped. This is a bit of a slow cloth process.

  

A sandwich of wool, leaves and silk then rolled around a pole and string tied around that. Simmered in a pot with eucalyptus leaves in the water for 5 hours. 

  

You can even see the midrib and some of the details of the leaf on the silk. 

I have three pieces of fabric (cotton, silk, wool) with eucalyptus leaves tucked inside them and wrapped around poles , steeping in a rather rusty old baking tray. They were left in my car  in the sun all day. The car gets very hot and they are now in the conservatory and will get hot tomorrow again. I'll leave them a few days to see how strong the colours get. See below.

The rusty baking tray is providing the mordant and making the print black.