I hope everyone is enjoying as much as their summer as possible, staying as cool and as safe as you can.
I finally had time to cut up the left-over red cabbage that was in my fridge for a while and boil the color out of it. After I started the process for natural dyeing I found out that dye from cabbage might not hold, that after a few washings it will fade away.... but it's listed in my dye book, so it has to take.
The important thing you must remember is to always wash your fabric or wool before and to mordant, so the color will take to the fiber. And have recently learned if you can let your fibers sit in a mordant for a full day it will make a huge difference in how the dye takes.
Okay, so I cut up the cabbage and put it in my steel pot to bring to a boil, then simmered it for an hour. I got a beautiful bright magenta/ purple color.
I then scooped out all the cutup cabbage. Placed it on a simmer and put in my wool and vintage cotton lace that I had been given from a friend.
Simmered that for about an hour. Now the cool part about working with cabbage is that you can change the PH by adding salt, vinegar, or baking soda. Salt will turn the dye a lovely blue, vinegar a lavender to pink dye and baking soda a turquoise green to a green color. If you want the dye darker, adding more cabbage and heating it longer and letting it cool with the cabbage in it a full day will help. Then letting the fiber sit in the dye for 24 to 48 hours.
Natural dying is really an experiment and a joy! I never know what I will get, and I take what I can get when I dye. I dye in small batches because the items are meant to be used for weaving or for my handmade books. But if you're planning on knitting a sweater or sewing clothing and want a certain color, measuring out your ingredients including your plant dye and weighing it is very important as well as making sure you have all the skeins you need or yards because the dye lot can change.
After I had my fiber simmer for an hour, I just didn't care for the lavender color I was getting it was pretty, but not what I wanted. And on top of it was leaving the wool a grey lavender, not what I wanted.
I removed it and decided to use salt to change the PH and get a blue.
I used about a 1/4 cup of salt stirred and brought back the temperature a bit and placed my fibers back in. This time I left it in the pot cooling for a full 24 hours.
WOW! I was very surprised; the vintage cotton took the most dye, The wider vintage lace looked like it had a bit of a sheen on it and dyed a much lighter blue. The darker yarn is merino wool from a farm in Wyoming; it is a soft yarn. The icy blue is Cotswold wool that I spun. Cotswold is soft but not as soft as merino.
I can't wait to use the wool in a tapestry I am planning and the lace in a future book!
Love and hugs,
Dolores
