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| Coreopsis seedlings |
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| Getting bigger! |
Coreopsis
tinctoria, otherwise known as dyers coreopsis, is a lovely little annual plant with rangy foliage and tons and tons of little yellow flowers with deep red centers. I started mine from seed in early June and by mid August the plants were knee high and full of flowers. Every time I pick the plants clean, the plants are full again in 2 days!
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| All grown up and towering over the marigolds in my dye garden |
So here is my first natural dyeing experiment:
Ingredients:
- small handful of 100% wool yarn and a 3" x 3" square of 55% hemp/ 45% organic cotton fabric, premordanted with 15% alum = 25 grams
- 25 g Coreopsis tinctoria flowers
- water
- small stainless steel sauce pan and a small cast iron sauce pan
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| Picked 25g of coreopsis flowers and steeped them in the sun in 4 cups of water for 6 hours (like sun tea!) |
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| I allowed the coreopsis tea to sit over night to make sure all the pigment was extracted |
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| Then I simmered the flowers for 30 minutes in a stainless steel pan |
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| I took half the dye concentrate and added it to a cast iron pan and added about a cup of water to each, then simmered for an hour. Iron is typically used to "sadden" colors in natural dyeing. |
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| 100% Wool yarn and a small 3"x 3" square of organic cotton/hemp fabric dyed in the stainless steel pan |
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| 100% wool yarn and hemp/organic cotton fabric dyed in the cast iron pan. I don't know if I'd call this "sad" but it definitely altered the color to a more green bronze. |
This was really fun. I cannot wait to try more plants. I have to admit I didn't expect the colors to be so vibrant. I think for the next batch, I'll wind off larger skeins of yarn. Also, after reading through all the books in the
previous post, I don't need to use so much Alum to be an effective mordant. Next time I'll do 8% as suggested in
Wild Color. Next up, Coreopsis part II!
