Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Iris Dyeing

Lovely irises that smell really good too. Another dyer on Ravelry did a some iris flower dyeing and got a lovely pale green. So I thought I would give it a try.

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80 grams of flowers. I poured boiling water over them a let steep. Wait stop that, reverse that. Do not I repeat do not pour boiling water over the flowers. If you do you get nothing. The boiling water "kills" the colors. Pray pay attention! Place flowers in pot and let soak for a few days.

Okay lesson learned. So the next day I picked more spent blooms. Then in a few more days I got this:

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So I took a wee bit of Alum mordant yarn and tossed it in the jar. Heated it to 180 deg for an hour and let it soak overnight.
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Now I have this lovely pale green.

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It looks prettier in person. Seriously. I'm going to let it soak for longer to see if it will get any darker. Maybe some solar dyeing will help.

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