Di Kearney continues her adventures in natural dyes.
This week I used a left over dyebath from a couple of months ago. The lighter skein is from the left over bath. The darker one is from the previous bath. The dyestuff was Tibouchina flowers and buds. The flowers are a bright blue purple. I had kept the left over dye in the freezer and in the container it looked like a dark reddish purple, but on putting it into the pot it looked more brownish and the colour looked weaker. The colour that came onto the alum mordanted wool was a very light grey. I tried adding a few grains of soda ash to a spoonful of the dye liquor ( see photo) and it turned greenish so I decided to add a soda ash post mordant. The wool quickly became a greenish greyish yellow, probably slightly more greenish than it looks in the photo. The wool from the original dyebath was modified with a pinch of iron and is more greenish than it appears in this photo.
