Dyes from Winter garden 2 : an array of yellows.

The dye plants I had in the garden were Genista tinctoria, Weld ( leaves) Dyers Chamomile and Tansy. I picked what  I had,

 

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I cut the plant materials up, soaked overnight added premordanted fibres and heated all of them  slowly  in  a large pan

From left to right Dyers Chamomile Gensita tinctoria, Tansy and Weld

The sunny result-very nice to have in the winter.  

As there is only so much yellow a girl can have I put rusty nails into the Genista tinctoria and tansy but in fact these only became a bronze/gold.(Top row), the acid yellow of the weld leaves stands out in the middle and in the fluff of alpaca to the right.  There was so much colour in the dyers chamomile that I repeated it and got almost  as good a colour the second time ( Alpaca on left hand side)

The alpaca I stuffed into a fermentation indigo vat- so now a truly eco green!

Logwood Persian Berries Eco Dye Pots

Sometmes natural dyes can prove to be very difficult to photograph.  Once or twice I have run into real problems getting the colour of the dye into the camera.  A Logwood dark blue will never come out the colour I see it as.  Today I have dyed some wonderful lime greens  and purples with Logwood and Persian berries but no matter how I photograph it it comes out grey with flashes of purple..  Oddly enough the Persian berries greens look grey in artifical light too  See for yourself-and you will have to take my word for it that this  does not do justice to the colours at all what  you see as grey on the screen is  a lovely green.