Pyracantha - Fire thorn

From my bus window I started noticing this shrub with bunches of bright orange berries. I didn't know what it was, but asked my plant expert at work. I had not read anything about the dyeing possibilities, but thought with those bright berries something had to happen. I went on a stealth gathering mission, collecting only the berries. Simmering them for and hour, letting it sit overnight and then straining and squeezing all the juice out. The color reminded me of a amber, dark beer color; not as strong a color as I thought. The alum samples came out a light orange color, maybe like cream of tomato soup with a little too much cream; the tin with alum made a nice golden tan color; the cooper with alum made an excellent light red-brown; and the iron again made nice neutral tan-grays.

Barberry

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I cut off the branches from my barberry bush, trying to take parts that seemed to have a lot of color and the tiny berries. I chopped them all up into small pieces and simmered for an hour and let it sit overnight. After straining, the juice seemed to be fairly red, so again I hoped for red. The first samples with alum produced an light tan-orange color. Adding the tin turned the samples to olive green, then tan-green with copper and a very nice warm gray-browns with the iron and pre alum + iron.

Carrot tops

Using the tops from carrots for dye -- who knew? It's fun to see the plant parts used for dye, it generally isn't what you're growing the plant for, you don't use the "food" part, it's the leftover parts -- tops, stems and leaves that get simmered in the pot. The carrot tops produced an nice range of four distinct colors, yellow to dark green, a little to brassy. I liked the dark green (carrot tops with iron) the best, with some dark blues, browns and grays, it would be a nice addition to the pallet.

Marigold

Here is a beautiful, colorful flower that you know is going to come blasting out of the box. These bright yellow pom pom flowers did not disappoint. I used a lot of fresh blossoms along with a few way past their prime, I'm not sure how much difference the fresh vs. dead makes to the final color. The pre alumed fibers produced a lovely rich golden tan. Adding some tin produced orange and yellow-gold, wonderfully bright and rich colors.

Adding the copper and the iron mordants produced brown-dark tans and dark greens, both a little acid for my tastes, but very use-able with the others in the "family."

Oregon Grape

OK I'll admit it, I want reds, blues, and purples. I had huge expectations when I gathered and started cooking up my oregon grape berries. They stained my hands when I picked them, they were dark blue, the juice was really red...

The top photo is the Oregon Grape plant, middle photo = berry samples, bottom = leaves

In went the yarn samples, a very dark red stained the yarn, it was really dark, almost brown, but it was a red. Then I tried the tin, and again a really dark blue - midnight. Disappointed, I really wanted a lively purple, but not to be. The copper and the iron produced really rich browns. Like before, not what I was hoping for, but pretty, especially within the group, it's really a wonderful way to get a lovely range of color by using the one plant, but altering it with different chemicals, they always go together enhancing one another.

The grape leaves did not produce anything unusual, I got the the tans and greens. With copper and iron the greens were very nice, soft and dusty, they would go wonderfully with the oregon grape berry colors.

Horsetail

This is a weed I really love. It has been described as some kind of Jurassic park plant. It starts its year as a spire shooting up -- sort of asparagus, but will bamboo type rings. It soon blossoms with fringe which gives it the horsetail name. I've always been intrigued with this plant, even trying to get it's rhizomes to grow in containers. The plant is very invasive; if it is growing in your yard, you hate it and can't get rid of it, but if you're like me, you try to grow it in pots, enjoying it's positives, with out the negatives.

The dye from this plant was little disappointing at the beginning of the dye protocol, but when adding the copper and iron mordants, the yarn turned into this beautiful soft gray greens and warm grays. The photos do not do this or many of the other photos justice. Most of these colors are just to subtle and close in value to come across on the computer.

I have color corrected the best I can in Photoshop, but I found when I corrected for the blue in every photo, trying to keep the yellow/green I got most of the time, the lovely gray and neutral colors were lost to some extent.

Red Onion

Again there was the collection of dry onion skins, boiled on the stove for about an hour and left to sit until the next morning.

The colors were in the same family as the yellow onion skins, but all a bit darker. Again, a fairly distinct color was garnered from the different minerals added. Tin brightened, whereas copper added the more red tones an iron the green.

So far the onion skins, both red and yellow, were the most successful plant dyes, based on the range of colors gathered from one plant -- if only I loved the fall colors as much as reds and purples.