I am so excited to see theses natural dye experiments. I am interested in beets, blueberries and maybe flower petals. Can’t wait to see what you do next
I absolutely love your videos! They are so soothing. I like to watch them while I’m knitting after a long day at work. I didn’t think that your vids could get better but then we were outside in the sunshine with birdsong!! For your natural dye series, I think it would be fascinating to see the results of different teas with mordant and without - particularly butterfly pea flower tea (you can order it on amazon) which is a brilliant blue until you expose it to acid like lemon juice! The same effect can be achieved with red cabbage I think? Thank you again for all you do!! Lots of love from Texas!!
I definitely need to revisit red cabbage. I'll add the blue tea to my list! I hope to do another round of natural dyeing filming in early September so there can be some more than this first set for 2019. :D
I have also dyed that, I took a extra step as when it was done I splashed iron water into it and it turned a very rich green. Iron water is just pieces of rusty iron in a glass jar, one part vinegar three parts water, let set for a few weeks till the water turns orange.
I'm looking forward to the black bean with mordant experiment! I've seen people really pretty blues and greens elsewhere online, which is very different from when you dyed with black beans and no mordant. One thing I like about the black bean dye is that is works on cotton as well as wool, so when I get around to that I'm definitely going to try it with both!
You might be able to scavenge around and find some pokeberry (Phytolacca spp.) as well as some lichens. Pokeberry with vinegar makes a gorgeous magenta. The lichens have tannins so no mordant required. When I am dyeing in volume, I have a dedicated pot for alum (plus cream of tartar if there is no silk) and keep refreshing it each day with a teaspoon of alum, then heat to 175, turn off the heat, and let it sit overnight. I'm excited to see the logwood you mentioned. It's so gorgeous! Loved this video!
Lichen sometimes need ammonia to release the colour, easy way to find out is to drop a small amount of lichen into a jam jar with a little warm water and a few drops of ammonia, it's a pinkish purplish red if I remember
I'm so glad you are doing this right now! I have currently blooming in my garden things like morning glories, mallow, brown eyed Susan's, and sweet peas (ornamemtal), and I've been wanting to try my hand at dying natural dyes. I will be harvesting these blooms in about a week. I will be watching your channel with great interest! Thank you for your prescience!
Most blooms are pretty crap at makin dye. Willow bark is amazing ..roots of dock and dandilion. Colourful petals usually just go to nothing unfortunately.
This was really interesting. I have dozens of skins and pits in various nooks in the freezers. My kids get very disappointed when they go freezer diving for food, followed by 'Mum stop putting random crap in the freezer and buy real food' - What can I say... You've gotta do, what you've gotta do. Thanks for sharing.
Woo hoo! I’m really looking forward to your series of videos on natural dyeing with mordants! I’ve done some natural dyeing, but only with vinegar, so I’m keen to see your results! 😻
All of the videos (I think there are 4 more) that are in this little segment were all mordanted at the same time. I want to try a few other things next time.
What fun! Never used a mordant and have always been curious. Thanks for this episode. I live in the country and have a ton of poke weed and want to give that a try sometime. I've heard black beans are a fun dye.
When I dye with plant matter, I tie it up in some cheese cloth first like a giant tea bag. This allows me to be sure I got it all out without any mess. As to what to try, walnuts, acorns, hickory nuts, and chestnuts are all substantive browns that can be shifted with different mordants. Golden rod gets a really nice yellow, Sumac is a good mordant on cotton and linen, Pokeberry gets lovely fuchsias on wool when treated like an acid dye. I've heard tales of blue from dogwood berries, but haven't found anything to back it up. A word of warning about the black beans, it's an anthrocyanin and they're fickle beasts.
I really wish that I had some cheesecloth. I need to get some to have on hand before I get started next time. I realized that I was strainerless when I was going for this project. I have some dogwood berries.... Mine are more apply than the little red clusters. (My dogwoods leaf first and then bloom) but I might have to see if I can harvest some to play with.
Hey Nicole with hue loco is doing natural dyeing on her ig stories. I know she took a class with a lady some mths ago that lived out in the wilderness. Couple things she mentioned you do want to clean the yarn second after moderant she hangs them to dry before rinsing. She said it was to cure the moderant. After dyeing same thing let dry before rinsing keeps color more vibrant. Just thought you might be interested.
Thank you, Carol! I had seen a bunch of different protocols. The first one that I was looking at didn't have you wash it at all. I didn't rinse the yarn for the avocado video (next) but I did for the black beans and ones after that. Although I did leave the yarn wet in between.
You can collect dandelions and marigolds and some other flowers over the rest of the summer and let them dry. I have used marigolds sprinkled in a pan on top of the yarn to create some added or deepened color on the skeins. Natural dying sure does take some time, but it is a lot of fun.
I think that I might work on this next spring for sure. This year I did dry out some rhubarb leaves and save them since when I was harvesting the plant i wasn't ready to do some dyeing.
There's a great book called Harvesting Color by Rebecca Burgess that is full of information. Natural dyeing seems so much more complicated. Some cheesecloth would help keep the vegetable matter down. I love your experiment! I have a tree that produces a purple berry that I would like to try and dye with, I think its loganberry...? or something like that. I tried cranberries once and it was a big mistake, the seeds got stuck in my fiber.
I would love to see you dye something with walnuts! I plan on doing that myself soon, but am always interested to see others dye with walnuts and other natural dyes.
On my laptop screen at 15:33 the liquid color already looks different, one looks more green. I love these soft organic colors. Wonder if the greener one had more pulp in it? Easier to wash if you pour liquid thru strainer because greens get slimy and hard to remove, especially soft leaves like spinach. Love the hands on style, seeing you in the natural makes me feel less of a klutz😍
You can buy it in tea form on Amazon I believe. It's a really pretty blue, but when you add lemon juice to the tea it turns like a magenta. It's really fun.
I believe some people use that, I haven't used it for canning etc. I typically buy the aluminum sulfate from dharma trading company. I'm not sure about the proportions for using alum in canning vs for dyeing yarn. I'm still more comfortable using dedicated dye equipment, though!
TBD I don't really know the correct term for something like this. Water bath is likely better. (I'm not sure what a cole-packer is and when I tried to look it up I just found a football player, lol.)
@@ChemKnitsTutorials A Cole Packer is what you you use to can High acid foods )like fruit, tomatoes, jellies, etc)... It's used to raised the jars and their contents to a temperature that is suitable for sealing and destroying virus/bacteria/molds that can make you sick (like botulism, salmonella, etc)...
I haven't tried from harvested walnuts yet (although my friend is going to save me some!) I did play with some walnut extract paste in an upcoming video. I did compare mordant to no mordant... and the results were interesting!
That seems a piss weak blend even for a cup of dandilion tea. Also take the green stems off to get a better clearer yellow. The green stems add a mucky colour.
I redid this where I collected a LOT more dandelions. czcams.com/video/Oo0z-9TRG9U/video.html I didn't remove the stems here either, but I dyed some yarn with forsynthia blossoms where it was a lot easier to remove the green and I got a clearer yellow czcams.com/video/Pbiz5xPenlM/video.html
the red pigment in beets is actually very heat and light-sensitive so it may not make a very fast dye - depending on some factors you might even end up with a gold after the pink fades out since those pigments are much more stable. Could be interesting though!
I have dyed yarn with beets but no mordant. I was hesitant to do it because the dye isn't very stable over time but it was requested a lot so I gave it a shot.
One reason why I went for superwash was that it tends to absorb a lot more color than the non-superwash yarns I started with. I wanted to amplify the colors I could get in these experiments. In general though, I like the feeling of doing non-superwash with natural dyes.
I am so excited to see theses natural dye experiments. I am interested in beets, blueberries and maybe flower petals. Can’t wait to see what you do next
Avocados, Black Beans, and then some extracts and powders that I got from a few companies are coming up soon.
I absolutely love your videos! They are so soothing. I like to watch them while I’m knitting after a long day at work. I didn’t think that your vids could get better but then we were outside in the sunshine with birdsong!!
For your natural dye series, I think it would be fascinating to see the results of different teas with mordant and without - particularly butterfly pea flower tea (you can order it on amazon) which is a brilliant blue until you expose it to acid like lemon juice! The same effect can be achieved with red cabbage I think?
Thank you again for all you do!! Lots of love from Texas!!
I definitely need to revisit red cabbage. I'll add the blue tea to my list! I hope to do another round of natural dyeing filming in early September so there can be some more than this first set for 2019. :D
I have also dyed that, I took a extra step as when it was done I splashed iron water into it and it turned a very rich green. Iron water is just pieces of rusty iron in a glass jar, one part vinegar three parts water, let set for a few weeks till the water turns orange.
Iron mordants can absolutely produce different colors than just with alum. This is a whole other journey of color! ;)
I feel like we are on a field trip. 😁
I wish I had a magic school bus we could all go on.... ;)
@@ChemKnitsTutorials oh how fantastic would that be? 😁😁
I'm looking forward to the black bean with mordant experiment! I've seen people really pretty blues and greens elsewhere online, which is very different from when you dyed with black beans and no mordant. One thing I like about the black bean dye is that is works on cotton as well as wool, so when I get around to that I'm definitely going to try it with both!
That video is FANTASTIC! I think the next one is avocado and hten black beans.
You might be able to scavenge around and find some pokeberry (Phytolacca spp.) as well as some lichens. Pokeberry with vinegar makes a gorgeous magenta. The lichens have tannins so no mordant required. When I am dyeing in volume, I have a dedicated pot for alum (plus cream of tartar if there is no silk) and keep refreshing it each day with a teaspoon of alum, then heat to 175, turn off the heat, and let it sit overnight. I'm excited to see the logwood you mentioned. It's so gorgeous! Loved this video!
Lichen sometimes need ammonia to release the colour, easy way to find out is to drop a small amount of lichen into a jam jar with a little warm water and a few drops of ammonia, it's a pinkish purplish red if I remember
This is so interesting! :D
I'm so glad you are doing this right now!
I have currently blooming in my garden things like morning glories, mallow, brown eyed Susan's, and sweet peas (ornamemtal), and I've been wanting to try my hand at dying natural dyes. I will be harvesting these blooms in about a week. I will be watching your channel with great interest! Thank you for your prescience!
I'm so glad you are enjoying it! Thank you for watching.
Most blooms are pretty crap at makin dye. Willow bark is amazing ..roots of dock and dandilion. Colourful petals usually just go to nothing unfortunately.
This was really interesting. I have dozens of skins and pits in various nooks in the freezers. My kids get very disappointed when they go freezer diving for food, followed by 'Mum stop putting random crap in the freezer and buy real food' - What can I say... You've gotta do, what you've gotta do. Thanks for sharing.
LOL! I love this. My husband is always wondering if he can throw things away or if I'ms aving them for dye.
Woo hoo! I’m really looking forward to your series of videos on natural dyeing with mordants! I’ve done some natural dyeing, but only with vinegar, so I’m keen to see your results! 😻
All of the videos (I think there are 4 more) that are in this little segment were all mordanted at the same time. I want to try a few other things next time.
What fun! Never used a mordant and have always been curious. Thanks for this episode. I live in the country and have a ton of poke weed and want to give that a try sometime. I've heard black beans are a fun dye.
Black beans are coming up next week I think!
When I dye with plant matter, I tie it up in some cheese cloth first like a giant tea bag. This allows me to be sure I got it all out without any mess. As to what to try, walnuts, acorns, hickory nuts, and chestnuts are all substantive browns that can be shifted with different mordants. Golden rod gets a really nice yellow, Sumac is a good mordant on cotton and linen, Pokeberry gets lovely fuchsias on wool when treated like an acid dye. I've heard tales of blue from dogwood berries, but haven't found anything to back it up. A word of warning about the black beans, it's an anthrocyanin and they're fickle beasts.
I really wish that I had some cheesecloth. I need to get some to have on hand before I get started next time. I realized that I was strainerless when I was going for this project.
I have some dogwood berries.... Mine are more apply than the little red clusters. (My dogwoods leaf first and then bloom) but I might have to see if I can harvest some to play with.
Hey Nicole with hue loco is doing natural dyeing on her ig stories. I know she took a class with a lady some mths ago that lived out in the wilderness. Couple things she mentioned you do want to clean the yarn second after moderant she hangs them to dry before rinsing. She said it was to cure the moderant. After dyeing same thing let dry before rinsing keeps color more vibrant. Just thought you might be interested.
Thank you, Carol! I had seen a bunch of different protocols. The first one that I was looking at didn't have you wash it at all. I didn't rinse the yarn for the avocado video (next) but I did for the black beans and ones after that. Although I did leave the yarn wet in between.
What a beautiful yellow. That must be why I've been breeding dandelions in my yard!
A perfect excuse!
You can collect dandelions and marigolds and some other flowers over the rest of the summer and let them dry. I have used marigolds sprinkled in a pan on top of the yarn to create some added or deepened color on the skeins. Natural dying sure does take some time, but it is a lot of fun.
I think that I might work on this next spring for sure. This year I did dry out some rhubarb leaves and save them since when I was harvesting the plant i wasn't ready to do some dyeing.
Love this! Summer camp dyeing...
Thank you!
I didn't know you could dye with Dandilions... that is interesting... I'm looking forward to the avocodo one :)
I wish I had more flowers!
Wow, turned out nice
Thank you!
There's a great book called Harvesting Color by Rebecca Burgess that is full of information. Natural dyeing seems so much more complicated. Some cheesecloth would help keep the vegetable matter down. I love your experiment! I have a tree that produces a purple berry that I would like to try and dye with, I think its loganberry...? or something like that. I tried cranberries once and it was a big mistake, the seeds got stuck in my fiber.
I did rice once to play with speckling... that was a HUGE nope since I couldn't rinse the starch out. ;)
If you use a teaspoon of c/t it makes the colours brighter especially when using Alum.
I will definitely have to try this in the future! Maybe I'll need to do a with/without c/t series. :D
I would love to see you dye something with walnuts! I plan on doing that myself soon, but am always interested to see others dye with walnuts and other natural dyes.
Walnut extract is coming up in a few weeks (early sept I think). My friend also has a Walnut tree and is going to collect them for me.
@@ChemKnitsTutorials Yeesss!!!! I'm so excited for this! I'll probably wait to dye my yarn until I see your video and can take notes. :)
On my laptop screen at 15:33 the liquid color already looks different, one looks more green. I love these soft organic colors. Wonder if the greener one had more pulp in it? Easier to wash if you pour liquid thru strainer because greens get slimy and hard to remove, especially soft leaves like spinach. Love the hands on style, seeing you in the natural makes me feel less of a klutz😍
It could be a pH thing. In the future (after this little mini series) I will try to add some acid to the no mordant color.
Perhaps a paper coffee filter or cheese cloth to pour your dandelion water through would save you the trouble of picking out fiber bits later
This would have helped for sure!
You should try using butterfly pea blossoms and see what happens with that!!!!!
OOO, I don't think I have those but I'll have to look into it for sure!
You can buy it in tea form on Amazon I believe. It's a really pretty blue, but when you add lemon juice to the tea it turns like a magenta. It's really fun.
Have you ever dyed with rose petals? Every year I get so many petals from my carpet Rose bush, and I wonder how it would work!
I haven't, but I would like to some day! I have some other dry flower petals I've collected.
Have you ever tried goldenrod dyes??? With a little alum...it give a real bright yellow
I don't think so! I'd like to.
I would love to see dying with rose and other flower petals, laid directly on the yarn to create a pattern of the petals.
That would be lovely
Perhaps using a strainer might help with the excess vegetable matter. Interesting result tho - love the pale yellow
I was caught unprepared. I need to get a dedicated dye strainer.
So can I use regular alum sold at the grocery store? I'm gonna start saving the yellow flowers from my coreopsis plant. Thanks Rebecca. Happy August!
I have had success with grocery store alum.
I believe you can, yes. I'd still recommend doing this in a separate pot than you use for food just to be on the absolute safe side.
Just wondering if you’ve found any difference in color intensity and/or the resulting color between using aluminum pans vs. stainless steel pans?
I don't really use aluminum pans besides as a holding container so I'm not sure.
Hi Rebecca, I have just bought alum powder (the one that is used in food). Would I use the same about that you have for dyeing natural yarn? Thanks
I believe some people use that, I haven't used it for canning etc. I typically buy the aluminum sulfate from dharma trading company. I'm not sure about the proportions for using alum in canning vs for dyeing yarn. I'm still more comfortable using dedicated dye equipment, though!
That set-up is more like a cole-packer than a double boiler...
TBD I don't really know the correct term for something like this. Water bath is likely better. (I'm not sure what a cole-packer is and when I tried to look it up I just found a football player, lol.)
@@ChemKnitsTutorials A Cole Packer is what you you use to can High acid foods )like fruit, tomatoes, jellies, etc)... It's used to raised the jars and their contents to a temperature that is suitable for sealing and destroying virus/bacteria/molds that can make you sick (like botulism, salmonella, etc)...
@@melvincollins5811 thank you!
Get the book wild colour by Jenny Dean give you different way of trying natural dyeing
And you get these colours
Thank you for the recommendation!
How about a fading test? Put them in the sun.
I would love to do some fading tests!
Black walnut hulls don't need a mordant and will dye haven't tried yet but they are starting to fall off trees here now
I haven't tried from harvested walnuts yet (although my friend is going to save me some!) I did play with some walnut extract paste in an upcoming video. I did compare mordant to no mordant... and the results were interesting!
Does salt makes the same result as the alum?
No. Table salt (NaCl) could affect the rates that colors absorb, but it shouldn't alter the hue or help more pigments absorb.
ChemKnits Tutorials Ah thank you! I put salt but the color was not expect 😊🤦🏻♀️
That seems a piss weak blend even for a cup of dandilion tea. Also take the green stems off to get a better clearer yellow. The green stems add a mucky colour.
I redid this where I collected a LOT more dandelions. czcams.com/video/Oo0z-9TRG9U/video.html I didn't remove the stems here either, but I dyed some yarn with forsynthia blossoms where it was a lot easier to remove the green and I got a clearer yellow czcams.com/video/Pbiz5xPenlM/video.html
Have you tried beets or eucalyptus? Would love to see those!
the red pigment in beets is actually very heat and light-sensitive so it may not make a very fast dye - depending on some factors you might even end up with a gold after the pink fades out since those pigments are much more stable. Could be interesting though!
I have dyed yarn with beets but no mordant. I was hesitant to do it because the dye isn't very stable over time but it was requested a lot so I gave it a shot.
Whoops I forgot the link: czcams.com/video/5CUMuJFY440/video.html
A strainer would have kept the dandelion out of the liquid.
I need to get one for dyeing. Since I'm using my dedicated dye pot I didn't want to gab my kitchen one. I felt unprepared.
@@ChemKnitsTutorials You could presumably also use a coffee filter or piece of cheesecloth/muslin as a big "tea" bag
Superwash??nooooo
One reason why I went for superwash was that it tends to absorb a lot more color than the non-superwash yarns I started with. I wanted to amplify the colors I could get in these experiments. In general though, I like the feeling of doing non-superwash with natural dyes.