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!

Weld Eco pot and Trefriw Woollen Mill Textile Market 3/4th December.

Quite where time goes too I don't  know but although I am not blogging much I am dyeing.! :)


Here is the colour I got from the  weld ( Reseda Luteola) I found growing by the Conwy Estuary a few weeks ago,.  I roughly chopped the  weld and put it into a kilner jar with 50 gms of blufaced leicester  and then left it for a few days.  When  I had time Iput it into large pan with two  other ecopots  so the pots were in a waterbath andheated slowly for a few hours. The colour from the weld was not brilliant-quite pale  but I was too busy to deal with it so I left  it for a few days before popping it back in the pan for another slow heating .  This time the yellow deepened and a tad of ammonia turned it the bright yellow in the picture.   I haven't taken it out as I am demonstrating eco dyeing  at Trefriw Textile Market on Sunday 4th December and this is a good example of how you can test dyes without having to use lots of heat. The other advantage of this method is multicoloured dyeing and when  I have a moment I shall show  the results of dyeing  with several dyes. Or you could come ( if you can) to the Textile Market to the Demos on the morning if the second day!
Waterbath dyeing is decribed in my book Colours of the Wolrd Ecodyeing which  you can buy from my website.  
If you would like to know mor eabout the book Jenny Dean generously reviewed it on her blog and you can find that here

Weld and bloggers block!

I have had bloggers block.
Here are the reasons:
Boring ones:
asthma
coming off HRT so I have lots of night  sweats and insommia
Fun ones
A Kindle
I sit in bed drinking a cup of tea reading in the morning  ( telling myself I really ought to blog but.......)
Marmite.
Marmite is not  what  you think , a famous black yeast spread to put on your toast , but in fact a black and white sprocker ( cross beteen a springer and a cocker) now a mischievous and energetic 5 month old. ( yes we thought we were mad too!)
Yesterday we were out for the day having a walk together and doing our best to tire out the said Marmite (as we call his name we hear a chorus from other dog walkers every where we go of "love him or hate  him "-a reference to the famous advertising campaign for  Marmite with a tag line of "love it or hate it")  .

It was our wedding anniversary and we were going out of  a meal in the evening so dog had to be well and truly tired out so he would sleep  rather than chewing up shoes or slippers or some such while we are out-he always find s something . ) So we were walking along the Conwy estuary loking across the river  to the famous Conwy castle built by Edward 1st to keep the Welsh down and trying to persuade Walnut our springer spaniel and Marmite that a dip in the fast flowing river was not perhaps the best of ideas when to my astonishment I saw huge stands of Weld.  Of course I did not have my camera! (sigh ) but take my word for it there was masses  of it behind fences.

I picked a bit of the  seed heads where most  of the dye is and tomorrow I shall  dye with it. ( Not before sprinkling it the seeds around some  newly dug earth  where weld likes to grow.

I was surprised  to see it so near the sea so I am interested to see whether it might be a different variety to the one I have growing in the garden . I tis certainly very vigorous some of stands were at least 6 ft high.
ps Marmite has kept me company while I was writing this  and enjoyed himself ripping up an old catalogue and then enterprisingly he went down stairs, brought up the dustpan  and is chewing that.

Weld or is it a triffid?

!

Its been growing in the greenhouse till Enys's  long suffering DH turfed it out to make way for the peppers.  It has started to seed so should  be bung full of dye. I am going to have one very big dye bath!

The sentence of death for weld

These fabulous-well to a natural dyer they are fabulous- lovely weld plants are under sentence of death- the reason?  They are growing in Enys's green house.  She tells me she tried to germinate some weld seed a couple of years ago, they failed, she cast them on the greenhouse floor and her DH dug the ground for his tomatoes and .....Weld! Enys says she will try and transplant them but they have very very very long roots.

For some time now she has been nurturing madder in pots.  Amazing to think  these rather uninspiring looking  plants can produce of the greatest of dyes.  These plants are two years old and so only really need another year or possibly two. before they can be used .    Enys is going to give them a haircut this is,  she tells me,  to encourage growth. 
The other plant is Coreopsis sp one of my favourites as it makes  a lovely vibrant orange with ammonia.  
If you have clicked on the links to see the colour you can get  get from these you can see why I am really keen on them all.  I hope the weld plants survive being transplanted  I had very little weld last year and I really missed it. 

 

Oh! and Happy New year to all my readers  followers and friends .

May you be fulfilled 

and happy

Weld (Reseda Luteola) -yes actually some dyeing!

I was checking back on some old posts and was amazed how much I wrote in 2007 and feel somewhat abashed at the contrast with now. I am dyeing most of the time and making inks ( which are selling very well) but don't think to blog about what has become routine(ish).
Kev, a fellow member of the members of the Online guild of Weavers Spinners and Dyers, sent me some of his own weld extract which he had made himself, I am not sure when but probably about 18 months ago. Here is his website with the information on how to do it. A couple of weeks getting ready for a couple of big workshops I needed some greens in a bit of hurry and realised I had still got Kev's extract. You know what it is like when someone sends you something a bit special you put it on one side to use for something special. Then, months later, when you are tidying up you find it again. So this time I thought I will use it instead of waiting for this mythical special event!

He had sent me a small pot of the weld extract- but did I weigh it -did I heck :( . I tipped the small hard dull yellowy brown pieces ( probably about 20g or so) into a small jug and poured over hot water. If I had checked Kev's website I would have seen he said to dissolve it in ammonia but dissolving it in hot water worked well although it took half an hour or so. I poured the resulting liquid into a slow cooker, topped up with water and added 200g of merino tops mordanted in 8%alum 7%cream of tartar. See here for more about mordanting .
The fibres came out a bright yellow but I added a drop of ammonia-if I do not when the wool used in felting the fibres go a bright floresecent yellow with the pH of the soap.
rinsed the fibres, partially dried them and then immersed into an indigo vat . Look at the absolutely gorgeous green in the top right of the top photo.
Altogether the weld extract dyed 600g of merino tops in strong to pale yellow and overdyed with indigo I got some yummy greens .
Thank you Kev - this was infinitely better than attacking my pile of dried weld which needs to be chopped up outside as it make such a mess.

More on Weld

I have just been reminded that Jenny Dean wrote an excellent account of dyeing with weld in Anglo Saxon times on her blog. I am ashamed to have forgotten this -just to many things to think about I suppose but that is no excuse really. The importance of Jenny's contribution, aside from showing that Anglo Saxons were a colourful lot, is that you can get a good colour with weld without using alum. She used woodash lye as an post mordant. You can find her work here

Weld: Dye from Leaves, Seeds, or Stalks?

Posted by Helen
First Year Florette
Mature Weld

Where is the dye in weld ( Reseda Luteola) ?

Recently I have seen a comment that most of the dye is concentrated in the seeds, (Judy Hardman, Natural Dyes) . (I reviewed her new book a few weeks ago and you can find that here) Dominique Cardon says that the dye is mostly in the seeds,inflorescence's and leaves, although traditionally the whole plant was always used which makes it bulky to store. Sue Grierson reports a 19th century source (Rhind) saying that the thick hollow stems of weld have little dye in them and to use the thin stalks (along with the rest of the plant).
According to Cardon the dyes in weld are flavones: luteolin and apigenin although mostly the former. It is luteolin that gives the strong light fast yellow that makes and made weld such an important dye plant. Grierson describes the colour as primary yellow but that she sometimes had to add soda to achieve this colour (by which I assume she means sodium carbonate or washing soda). Cardon reports that the yields of dye from weld vary enormously and puts this down to different strains, but I wonder whether it is also due to harvesting times as harvest weld too soon and the colour can be poor whereas it seems to go on giving colour till the leaves are withered . Once the leaves are gone in my experience there is no colour.
My friend Debbie Bamford has written an informative blog about weld with a picture of a magnificent specimen growing outside one of the outbuildings. You can find that here

On Friday 24th July I cut all the weld in the garden during a rare period of sunshine following very heavy rain in the previous few days.I mention this as Dominique Cardon says that the yield is improved after moderate watering although I am not sure our cloud burst could be described as moderate! Most of it has gone to be dried some for my own use some for sale but one stand I kept for an experiment.
When I cut the weld ,the bottom leaves were starting to go yellow and most of the inflorescence's had gone to seed which is when I judge weld to be at it's best. The seed comes from weld that grows wild locally -on areas of disturbed ground in the village where I live in North Wales weld has grown wild for many years. After I ran my first dyeing workshop here in 1995, the sister of one of my students, a lady well into her 70's, came to tell me that she used to pick weld to take to the teacher in the school in the village for all the pupils to dye with and showed me where to find it . Near this site Ladies Bedstraw ( Gallium Varum) grows wild too. Since then I have often found weld particularly on some rough ground later used for building. Ever since I first brought back weld it has grown in my garden sometimes more sometimes less. This year I have had four stands of self sown weld.
So while DH and I enjoyed a glass of wine in the early evening sunshine we split one stand of weld. The inflorescence's /flower heads and seeds into one pot. Leaves into another and stalks into a third. The stalks were quite fine less than 5 mm wide with the thickness of the wall about 1mm
Seeds/flower heads: 137.7g +3 litres
Leaves: 116g+2.5litres
Stalks:136.3litres
and were soaked overnight
There was no discernible colour in the water after soaking overnight
Pots were put onto to heat at 10.39 and by 11.55 were:
stalks 90 degrees C
Seeds 60 degrees C
Leaves 60 degrees C
The colour of the dye liqour in the pots was a pale yellowy green and seemed to be the same.
I turned up the heat under the seeds and leaves and by 14.30 they were:
Stalks 90degrees C
Seed heads 85 degrees C
Leaves 85 degree C
Then I turned the heat off and left overnight.
The stalk bath had the characteristic weld smell.

There are a variety of ways to dye with weld. Cardon reports two methods used by French silk dyers. In one the weld was covered with cold water and heated for 15 minutes this was extracted before the process was repeated and the two extracts put together. In the other weld was covered with cold water and boiled for an hour.In both cases the plants were removed from the water. As you can see from my notes above I leave the plant materials in after heating and will also leave them in while dyeing but this is partly because I am not concerned with even dyeing as I shall be dyeing Wensleydale fleece. I have also,in the past, left weld soaking for several weeks when it fermented and gave quite an astonishing amount of colour.

I then checked Partridge who is a great fan of weld and he says to dye wool a fine yellow put wool previously mordanted in alum to boil for quarter of an hour and then let it lie all night . He adds pearlash ( wood ash lye-potassium carbonate which Liles says can be substituted by sodium carbonate).and tin to get a bright yellow.


10.08am Sunday 26th September
Added 2 litres of water to each dye bath
190gof wet mordanted (8% alum 7% Cream of tartar),Wensleydale to each dye bath -all I had. The dry weight was probably half that so I am using at a rough approximation 100% dye stuff to fibre.
The fibres in the seed head bath took on pale soft lemony yellow immediately. Fibres in the stalks and leaves bath look unchanged.
Started to heat.
12.pm
Stalks 97 degrees soft yellow
Seed heads 72 degrees bright yellow-this is the strongest dye bath
Leaves 65 degrees soft yellow-this is the weakest bath
by 1 pm the difference in colour is very noticeable. The seed heads are in the lead with a bright yellow, the stalks follow on behind with a softer yellow but the leaves trail in third place the colour being softer and not as bright.

I browsed through my old dye books to see how different people dyed with weld. Something I should have done before I started not afterwards! Jill Goodwin in "The Dyers Manual" -the first dye book I ever brought- mentions both chalk and salt. Many Dyers of old she says used chalk and others salt. I have tried chalk-don't think it made any difference but not salt. Although it might be too late I removed a sample of fibres from each bath and added 1 teaspoon of salt to each bath now with the heat switched off.Colours of the dye bath

Samples from each dye bath with ammonia added on the bottom row.
Leaves on the left, seed heads in the middle, and stalks on the right. Once ammonia was added the difference between the dye bath was not very obvious. Salt added made no discernible difference samples second row. It should have been added in the beginning.

My conclusion is that there is more dye in the seed heads then anywhere else but still enough from all the other plants to make gathering the whole plant advisable unless you are very short of space.
Welcome to new followers. Your presence is appreciated.

Books I have referred to in the text are:
William Partridge A Practical Treatise on Dying published by Pasold Research Fund Ltd
Jill Goodwin A Dyers Manual Published by Ashmans Publication ISBN - 9780954440107

Liles, J N Art and Craft of Natural Dyeing The University of Tennessee Press

Sue Grierson The Colour Cauldron Published by the Author ISBN 0 9510132 11
Judy Hardman and Sally Pinhey Natural Dyes Published by Crowood ISBN 978-1-84797-100-5
John and Margaret Cannon Dye Plants and Dyeing Published in association with the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew ISBN 1-871569-74-5
Dominique Cardon Natural Dyes Published by Archetype Publications ISBN -1-904982-00-5

Addition to the Dye Garden Ascelpius Tuberosa Butterfly MilkWeed

Posted by Helen
We have a number of additions to the Dye Garden lately, Asclepius Tuberosa or Butterfly milkweed is the latest and the one of which Enys is most proud as she has nurtured it and overwintered it and here it is in flower. This plant is a member of the Asclepiadaceae or milkweed family although it does not have a milky sap. It is a native of North America found in sandy loamy or calcerous soils of prairies and open woods and is a dye plant producing a range of yellows golds and light bright olives depending on mordant but we are also interested in it as it attracts butterflies which fill our other criteria forthe garden -that it is a garden for the wildlife. It was also used by Native Americans and early settlers for the treatmentof lung complaints-so defintely a good one for me to have- and it was at one time called pleurisy root. It was also used as analgesic, laxative, dermatological and gynacological aid
All this information about it comes from Dyes from American Native Plants A Practical Guide by Lynne Richards and Ronald J Tyrl published by Timber Press Inc ISBN 0-88192-688-X , which Enys brought back from the US a couple of years ago.

Dye Plants in Flower at the moment also include: Viper Bugloss in the picture below, supposed to give purple with roots-yet another one Imust try!


Iris Pseudocorus supposed to give black with the root but not by me


Cosmos Sulphureus flowers give yellows

Weld Reseda Luteola-this year we have had a a lotof weld but it is all self seeded and this large plant was at the edge of a a bed dug at the beginning of the growing season last year -it set a florette last year and this year has just grown and grown.This of course gives a bright lightfast acid yellow which with ammonia is almost florescent

Here is our u shaped foxglove it had fallen over got propped up again and this is the result.

and finally -the principal reason why Enys put mullein Verbascum Thapsus in the garden -it is the only place for the mullein moth, Cucullia verbasci, and here are the happy caterpillars


Jill Goodwin in a Dyers Manual says with copper sulphate this gives a good green but it is one of those plants I have yet to get round to trying.