Hi UB,
Yes, the natural oils on the wool are persistant. It's curious that all the other materials (onion skins, dandelions, beet root, saffron, grass, etc) have all worked well though. It was only the flower petal dye that just washed clean completely clean. If this doesn't work, I'll have to try with wool yarn, which should be free of oils already. If that doesn't work, it's a problem with this kind of dye taking to wool.
Thanks for the tips UB.
- Jeff
P.S. Well, most of it washed out again. Given the other materials worked with less washing, I figure that either there is something else extracted from those parts of the plants that assists cutting through the grease (a natural acid, etc) or the pigment is not water soluable (the problem with the blue dye extracted from woad) and requires an additive (urine was used to break woad's indigo down, where it became water soluable, absorbed into the material, then when exposed to air it would return to blue - don't think I'll try that route though). I tried one more quick (10 minutes) in the dye bath, but this time squirted a bunch of leamon juice on the wool (adding a "natural acid") to test that idea (not the best test in the world I admit). That didn't really make much of a difference. The final result is a dirty looking piece of wool, a brown with a red tinge to it perhaps, but very weak. Certainly not white, but not a strong colour that I would have expected based upon the intensity of the dye itself.
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