Will do UB. I've collected another load of petals and have another good batch of red dye. Have washed the wool again, and will give it another wash as well. Fingers crossed.
- Jeff
Will do UB. I've collected another load of petals and have another good batch of red dye. Have washed the wool again, and will give it another wash as well. Fingers crossed.
- Jeff
How to store all of it?
My only question is how to store all the cheap stuff we can get. We get such a large quantity of yarn, tinsel, mylar, foam, etc...at such a cheap price. My desk is packed already with "stuff".
Guess I could always give it away.
Cal E. Batis
Hi UB,
Washed the wool twice in warm water (using dish washing liquid), rinsed well, and added to the dye + vinegar bath while warm. Let it simmer until the dye was quite concentrated, and poured it into a cereal bowl. Will let it sit in that overnight, and will rinse tomorrow. Here's a shot of it now :
As you can see, I'm not doing a large amount. But, at the moment, it looks a very deep claret. This is the same piece of wool I tried the other time (so it had been washed, and then soaked in the dye bath with vinegar and salt once, followed up by the above double extra clean, etc).
If it doesn't take this time, then it would appear that the flower petal dyes are much trickier than the others I've tried (which all stained nicely on the first attempt).
Fingers crossed, because the colours are fantastic if they will hold.
- Jeff
Good morning Jeff,
You just may find that 'dish washing liquid'
WILL NOT
REMOVE the wool fat.
Which will block the take up of the dye.
Wool fat is a lot harder to remove totally that you ever dreamed.
Kind reguards,
UB
UB, if dishwashing liquid doesn't remove the lanolin - what do you use?
Jeanne
Good morning J,
cheap, $2 a spray can Auto Degreaser.
AND
then I wash/rinse it well,
you will be amazed the 'muck' that the degreaser removes.
Kindest regards,
UB
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.
Last edited by JeffHamm; 05-27-2009 at 06:42 AM.
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