Dyeing Wool with Hemp Agrimony

Madeleine Jude recommended I grow Hemp Agrimony (Eupatorium cannabinum). As you will read in this link, she used the flowering tops to dye yarn a strong yellow green. I was particularly interested when, in conversation on a Ravelry forum, she told me that unlike many dye plants, Hemp Agrimony likes damp conditions and copes with shade. Wonderful plant for a garden in Wales. I sowed a packet of seeds last Spring and the young plants did indeed thrive. I watered them regularly during the unusually hot weather in July and they grew about two feet tall and actually flowered this month.

Earlier this summer, I found plenty of hemp agrimony plants growing wild along my regular dog walking route. What is more, lurking round the back of the greenhouse in my own garden, I already had a mature plant, which grew about eight feet tall and fell over before I spotted it. Never let it be said I am too tidy a gardener. 

Once I was aware of all these established plants, I saw them flowering much earlier than my newly grown ones. In the heat of July, I was able to stuff a jar with flowering tops, which solar dyed some wool fibres vivid yellow, a colour much like Madeleine Jude's yarn. Which made me very pleased to have grown my own and a bit surprised that the plant isn't better known. There is little or no information about dyeing with hemp agrimony either online or in my books. Further exploration seemed well warranted.

Last week, I cut 300g tops from my young flowering plants and simmered them for an hour. The dye bath looked pale yellow (centre jar), adding vinegar made it go pale pink (left), while adding soda ash to make the dye alkali deepened the yellow (right).

Rummaging for some test fibres, I found three 50g skeins of Cheviot wool yarn which I mordanted with alum ages ago. Madeleine used a 1:1 ratio in her dye pot, this was a 2:1 plant to fibre ratio. The skeins were soaked and simmered for an hour and left in the dye overnight, but next day, their colour was dimmer than I had hoped.

I gave one skein a rinse then a soak in water with a little dissolved soda ash and its colour did brighten somewhat. Not as good as Madeleine's, but in retrospect, I now remember that this yarn does not pick up plant dyes particularly well. The two remaining skeins were heated again, one with copper and the other with iron solution (see below, right and left). 

Next year, I'll definitely be dyeing some nicer yarn. Now I appreciate how big they grow, I'd better move my young hemp agrimony plants to give them more space. Probably, as older plants, they will flower earlier and maybe that will also help in getting stronger dye colours in future.

Finally, one of those eeeek!!! moments. I asked himself to uproot the huge plant and clear the area behind the greenhouse. Major event next month, the old greenhouse will not have to be patched up again this winter, it is coming down before it falls down. Thanks very much, Mum, I have decided to squander my inheritance on a state of the art greenhouse of considerable size, beauty and style. 

Sod's Law, the same evening the big agrimony came out, I saw a fascinating snippet on Gardener's World. Last week's programme showed a group of women from Asia with a shared allotment in the UK where they grew hemp agrimony especially in order to dye fabric a purple blue with the seeds. Astonishing - I've sent an email to the BBC and if they ever do put me in touch with the group to ask about their method, I'll be having a go at that next year.

Dyeing Wool and Silk with Deep Pink Hollyhocks

Last year, I planted half a dozen Double Maroon Hollyhocks and never saw a flower. It was a damp spring, the leaves succumbed to rust fungus and by June all the flower spikes had been completely destroyed. This year, expecting the worst and hoping for the best, I bought just a couple of young plants, put them out in a new location and watched with high anticipation as they flourished in the heat wave. Oh yes, soon I'd have the fun of dyeing this sequence of blues again. Only my lovely, healthy plants weren't Double Maroons after all. In July, the flowers opened to show deep pink rather than dark red petals. I was quite peeved and said as much to my companion, Elinor Gotland.

"Curse that garden centre and its staff of  gibbering bloody chimpanzees, more interested in servicing the tearoom than labelling their plant pots correctly. Now I'll have no blues again this year, just mouldy yellows and greens. A pox on those unbotanical idiots and their slapdash, carrot cake ways."
"Fair play, I'd torch the place, Beaut."

It's a great comfort to have a sympathetic friend. 
As the first pink hollyhock flowers passed their prime, I stuffed them into a jar of water with a length of alum mordanted tops. Might as well see what solar dyeing would do. The water turned an impressive purple, but I didn't get overly excited.

Reds and pinks are fickle flowers, promising much and giving little. Geraniums make a beautiful dye bath. Couldn't resist trying them again this year and as before, the bright red water in the jar soon faded to tea colour, leaving me with a bit of brown wool. The purple jar of hollyhocks had at least stayed colourful.

"Hey, Elinor, come and look at this. My hollyhock dyed wool has gone all stripey." 
After a few weeks in the sun, the colour in the jar of pink hollyhocks wasn't half as dull as I'd expected. I tipped out the flowers onto the compost heap and laid the tops out to dry.
"I've had splodgy, uneven colours out of solar jars before, but I've never seen anything dyed in stripes. Must have been visited by the fairies."
"It wasn't wool tops you put in there, muppet, that's wool with silk fibres blended in. If you ask me, it's the wool that dyed greeny yellow and the silk has gone pinkish. I'm not gonna lie, they both look crap."
I wasn't so sure.

By this time, a fair pile of flowers had fallen from the hollyhock plants. Heating them to hand hot in a pot of water made another purple pink dye bath. I've read about safflower dyes, where you have to go through a number of steps, dyeing wool to clear the yellow pigment, changing the dye bath pH and using cotton to pick up pink pigment before changing the pH again to release it into silk. Wondering if the wool had been a necessary adjunct to dyeing silk a hollyhock pink, I divided the dye bath into two pots and put a strip of silk fabric into each then added some mordanted fleece to the larger pot.

After gently heating them for an hour and leaving the pots overnight, I found the wool had come out a dingy beige together with pale purple silk, whereas the silk heated alone had taken up more dye and come out deeper purple. So the wool wasn't clearing any yellow colour, seems to me that the same dye simply comes out a different colour on silk.

I thought I'd play about with the pH anyway. Putting two samples of the dye bath into jars, I added vinegar to acidify one jar, which promptly turned brown/green, then used soda ash to alkalinise the other, which went deep pink. Soaking one end of the paler silk strip in each jar, after ten minutes, the ends had changed to green and deeper purple.

My companion came outdoors to find me getting busy with two paint brushes. 
"I'm using vinegar and soda ash to paint this silk with a green vine and purple flowers. Only it hasn't come off how I wanted."
"I've told you before, leave art to the artists. Stick to what you're good at and put the kettle on, Beaut."

Elinor has a thing about silk and from the speed she swathed herself in this lot, I suspect she rather liked the colours after all. One way or another, I don't think I'll get to keep these pink hollyhock dyes for long. So fragile and fugitive, I daren't rinse the silk, even ironing it seemed to dim the colours. Still, it's been altogether more interesting than I expected. 

Tea in the garden was considerably more artistic than my companion expected. I just bought a new tea set in Llandeilo. It's called 'Everyone looked up to Lisa' and it was made by Lindy Martin. I can't tell you how much I love it.
"One lump or two, then, Elinor?"

Attempts at Dyeing with Marigold Flowers

I used to grow pot marigolds as companion plants for tomatoes and I was sure that some years ago, I'd got a good orange dye colour from them. Only that was before I started keeping a blog, so I couldn't check. This spring, I sowed a couple of packets of marigold seeds.By June,the plants had big flowers with multiple layers of petals.

Here is a photo of one flower, laid on alum mordanted wool fabric in the middle of a circle of eucalyptus leaves. 

So many petals and such a bright orange, I thought these marigolds would easily be able to dye the thin layer of wool fabric underneath them. After rolling and tying up the fabric and simmering it for an hour, then leaving it to cure for a few days, I found the eucalyptus leaves had printed beautifully, but there were no marks at all on the wool to show where the marigolds had been. Still, hey ho, very few plants have a sufficiently intense dye concentration for contact printing. With my expectations downgraded and the sun blazing the whole way through July, it didn't seem too much to ask that a solar jar full of marigolds would dye a measly 10g of alum mordanted wool and silk fibre.

Not a lot of joy to be had from the jar by August, was there?.

Somewhat baffled, I thought it might help to have a proper look at the dye. No shortage of new flowers blooming and the sun still shining, so last week, I simmered a big basketful of marigolds in a pot of water. After sieving out the flowers, the remaining fluid looked, well, just like water - see the sample in the jar on the left? When I added some dissolved soda ash to the jar on the right, it turned bright yellow, convincing me there was actually dye in the dye bath. Big smile, I reckoned that all this time, my miserable results had been down to having the wrong pH for marigold dyeing. Haha - I put several teaspoons of soda ash into the pot and added a mere 10g of wool before simmering it in the alkaline dye for an hour. This time, the fibres turned a marginally deeper yellow than the wool from the solar jar. I'm disappointed. According to the book, marigolds should be able to dye their own weight of fibre a strong greenish yellow. Probably I've been growing the wrong species. No more casual picking up of seed packets with pretty pictures in the garden centre.  Next year, I shall be buying the old classic pot marigold, Calendula officinalis. Though the ones in the garden do look lovely.

Mordants in Solar Jars

"Are you just stuffing plain, dry Merino into those jars of flowers?"
"It'll be alright Elinor, calm down, I've done solar dyeing this way before."
"What, with no scouring and soaking and mordanting, you expect that wool to take up dye properly? You're off your trolley, Beaut." My companion turned away, settled her specs lower down her nose and resumed waving her hoof in time to unheard music.
"I put some dissolved alum in with the water in the jar, so the sun mordants the wool at the same time as releasing dye from the flowers. Great short cut, quick and easy, especially with all this hot weather." I waited for some appreciation of my cleverness, but Elinor was now absorbed in her own work. I pottered over. "What's that you're reading?"
Elinor pressed her lips together and shook her head.
"Stop distracting me, it's only a few weeks til the performance. Were you not listening when I told you I'd be singing a solo for the Tabernacl Choir? I'm learning the score with the Musical Director breathing down my neck. He's such a perfectionist."
"I know, he gives the tenors a really hard time. I'm a bit nervous myself, Ethel Smyth's Mass in D is a big challenge for all of us."
"Oh, you've got nothing to worry about, hidden up the back of the alto section, copying Gwyneth's every note. You relax, go back to your jars and waste good wool for lack of preparation, I shall be totally exposed to the public eye and ear doing my solo and I do not intend to be second rate. Unlike some." At which, she returned to her humming and hoof waving, frowning diabolically at any interruption, even when I just raised my eyebrows and mimed drinking a cup of tea. Stung by my companion's remarks, I wanted evidence to prove that taking short cuts wasn't spoiling my solar dyeing.

I scoured, soaked and mordanted two 10g portions of blended merino and silk tops with 10% alum and put them into two jars, one with a rusty nail to add iron, and filled the jars with water. Then I tore off two more 10g strips of the same tops, giving them no mordant or soak at all before putting them into another two jars, this time with 1g of dissolved alum added to the water as well as a rusty nail in one jar. Finally, twenty Dyers Chamomile flowers were put into each jar and all of them stood together on the shelf in the greenhouse. The dry tops floated up to the top of their jars, but I reckoned they should soon absorb some fluid and sink down.

The sun shone in the greatest heatwave Wales has experienced in decades. Two days later, the unprepared tops were still floating and athough the fluid in their jars was more yellow, it already looked as though the solar dyeing was working better on the premordanted fibres. My companion was still busy trilling away at her solo and I thought maybe I'd go and practice the fiddly bits of the fugue in the Credo.

Five days in and the situation looked even worse for the short cut jars, where the wool still floated pale above an even more yellow fluid. Time I learned all those Amens in the Gloria. After a week, the unprepared fibres at last seemed to be taking up some colour and I had hopes that the all in one mordant and dye jars would work fine in the long run. No harm in giving all the jars a good shake, just to mix things up.

Two solid weeks of hot sunshine and temperatures up to 27 degrees Centigrade are almost unheard of in Wales.
"Come out of that greenhouse, Beaut. You'll boil yourself alive." I started guiltily and stood in front of the jars as my companion sauntered in. "More solar dyeing is it? Something I ought to see, perhaps?" 
No getting away with this, I had to explain the experiment.
"Looks like the mordant in the water is holding the dye in your short cut jars."
"I think the wool in them looks just as yellow as the premordanted wool now though, Elinor."
"Really? Shall we have a look?"
Before I could protest, the jars had all been emptied out onto the lawn.

"Well, the wool has all gone yellow, Elinor."

"Mmm, but not equally yellow. The short cut jars have not worked as well, the dye is second rate. And your rusty nails haven't modified the colour much."
"Maybe they didn't have long enough to dissolve iron into the water. The wool went really green with rusty nails in those jars of Dyers Chamomile that got left for months. It might have helped if these jars had been left a bit longer."
"Best you tidy this lot up. I must dash. Mustn't keep the orchestra waiting." My companion headed off to another rehearsal, calling over her shoulder, "Don't leave those nails on the grass, they'll bugger up the lawn mower."

I have to conclude that all in one mordant and dye solar jars don't work as fast as ones with premordanted fibres. Unless I intend to wait for months to get this much solar heating into a jar in an average Welsh summer, the short cut method isn't really a short cut at all. Possibly, the results would be second rate how ever long I waited. Now they are dry, I can see that the silk fibres have dyed more strongly in the short cut jars, making a deeper contrast with the pale yellow wool and a good airing has promoted the saddening effect of iron from the rusty nails.

If the results aren't quite what I had hoped, at least in the meantime I've prepared thoroughly for the choir's big event this Sunday. I'm intrigued to know exactly what Elinor will be singing. There's Always the Sun?

Dyers Chamomile and Solar Jars

Two Dyers Chamomile plants have taken over the entrance to my dye garden. Every winter I cut them down to 10cm above ground, every spring they bush out, then sprawl over the lawn in summer. Having survived frost and snow, they are absolutely loving a month of unusually hot weather.

I picked all the flowers last week, rubbed off some blackfly then staked up the stems to stop them getting chewed by the lawn mower. About 500g fresh flowers were simmered in a pot of water for an hour, then sieved out before I put 225g alum mordanted yarn into the dye bath to simmer for another hour. 

Indicator paper showed the bath was acidic at pH 5, so I added just enough soda ash to bring it up toward neutral pH 7. The yarn was 75% merino with 25% tussah silk, which I know takes up dye particularly well. Notwithstanding these advantages, I reckon the hot weather has doubled the dye content of my Dyers Chamomile flowers, as I have never known the dye come out as powerful as the colour of the actual flowers or turn as rich a green with an iron modifier.

A few days later, more flowers had opened and with more hot sunshine forecast, this seemed the perfect time to run a solar jar experiment. Only my Kilner jars were still full of experiments I never completed last year. I remember the tall jar contained 200g flowers, but the garden had to be abandoned in July and I only got round to putting a couple of alum mordanted silk skeins in there during the winter.

The jar sat on the underfloor heating in the bathroom for a while and came outdoors in spring. After nearly a year, the flowers were still intact and sweet smelling and fermentation had acidified the pH right down to 4. When I emptied it onto the compost heap, very little yellow had gone into the silk. Though I hoped that rinsing might wash out the acid and bring up some colour, the silk stayed drab and will need overdyeing. Years ago, I spent July filling these jars with concentrated dye solutions, made in a dye pot then plant material sieved out. They looked very pretty lined up on the shelf, I had scalded the jars in advance and no mould grew. Unfortunately, when I tried to dye with them during the winter, only the jar of meadowsweet gave wool much colour. I know saving up flowers as you pick them over a few weeks works fine in a solar jar, but it isn't a long term storage solution, for longevity, flowers need to be dried.

The other two jars of Dyers Chamomile had alum mordanted Speckled Face Beulah fleece in them. One also had a couple of rusty nails in the bottom to provide iron. Though it looked yellow when I tipped it out, once the air got to the wool, within a minute the iron turned the dye to green. I would have been pleased with the depth of colour if I hadn't seen how much more strongly this year's flowers are working. The fleece felt a bit rough, but as I expected from past experience, it had survived.

My companion, Elinor Gotland, had been less optimistic. She called across the lawn to me while I was carrying the jars down to the compost heap.
"Whatever you left to rot in there, just dump the lot and don't go bringing any mouldy wool into the house, Beaut. What last year's solar jar experiments should be telling you is not to start any more."
Putting the fleece into a bucket to rinse, I shouted back over the noise of the hose.
"I think some of these jars must have had different varieties of coreopsis flowers in them, only they've all turned to mush. Probably rinse off ok."

"Oh, disgusting. Just scrub out the jars and be done with it. What can you possibly make with a few handfuls of plant dyed fleece?" 

Coreopsis Tinctoria Dye, Modifying pH, Adding Iron and Copper

I first grew Coreopsis tinctoria plants and started dyeing with them in 2013 and I've been saving seed to grow them again every year since. I'm sure that when I started, the flowers were mostly yellow with deep red centres, just a few plants having petals entirely dark red. I tended to ear mark those to save seeds from, after discovering in 2014 that their dye seemed deeper. 

This summer's flowers appear to have larger red centres, with more raggedy edges and some have tiger spotting or little extra petals twisting out of their centres. I think these changes look rather fabulous and guess the plants have hybridised somehow. Botany is not my subject. There can be no reason to think their dye properties might have changed, though I have been half tempted to blame the flowers for some recent unplanned results.

Coreopsis tinctoria is a lovely annual dye plant. Buds bulge and burst open so profusely, it is hard to pick often enough to keep the plants from going to seed. Simmer an equal weight of fresh flowers with mordanted wool, silk or cotton to get orange/bronze colours. Fill a solar jar with flowers and mordanted wool and it will only take a few weeks warmth for the dye to be taken up.

Rediscovering a jar of coreopsis and merino which had been brewing rather longer, in fact, forgotten since last summer, I emptied it out onto the lawn.
"Ych y fi! Has the dog been sick?" My companion, Elinor Gotland, gave the contents of the jar a wide berth. Though the flowers had disintegrated, they hadn't gone smelly and the merino was absolutely fine after a couple of rinses.

Spinning along with the DIY and Dye team on Ravelry for this year's Tour de Fleece I thought dyeing my Beulah yarn a glorious orange like this would be a splendid result to show off. Hoping to impress, I used twice the weight of flowers to wool and knowing coreopsis dye is pH sensitive, I added enough dissolved soda ash to make the dye bath alkaline, about pH 8. 

"That yarn looks less of an orange, more of a raspberry and you look like you've been sucking a lemon, Beaut." 
"I must have overdone it with the alkali. "
"I'd say sour beats sweet with coreopsis dye." Elinor strolled blithely past the heaps of wool, leaving me sighing bitterly and soaking a length of the yarn in vinegar. It had little effect. 

Might as well pursue my original plan to modify one skein with a brief heating in iron solution - top of photo, and another in copper - middle of photo. I tested a pinch of the merino at the same time. None of the modified versions are a patch on the classic orange - bottom right.

Ah well, I thought, at least I have been spinning a steady ten rolags of Beulah wool every night and the coreopsis will have more flowers tomorrow. Simmering another two skeins in a new bath - AAAGGH .... NO - the result was worse still - greenish brown?? (see right of photo) Presumably I didn't scrub the pot well enough and it still had traces of iron in it. Enough to spoil the orange, at any rate. The pink skein in the photo had been dyed with birch bark and while I was modifying that to purple in a copper solution - far left of photo, I modified the second greenish coreopsis skein, turning it chestnut brown. What no fruity or nutty remarks? Where had Elinor got to? 

We didn't meet again til the evening. Coming in with my watering can, I found her sunning herself in the greenhouse.
"I noticed you'd taken another fall in your Tour de Fleece, Beaut, still, no bones broken are there? I've put some of the Beulah locks in this jar, mixed up with the latest coreopsis flowers. You can spin them another time. Come on, pick yourself up, pedal that wheel, get back on your bike. It's a rather fine view from arriere du peloton."
"Thanks, Elinor, you're a pal."
"Hmmm. Press on with the next stage and you might even win the beige jersey."