No Eat

I have been dyeing little scraps of cloth so I can bring them into work and say, "Look, it's really not that hard, and it's much more fun than drinking elderflower cordial and lingonberry juice."

For mordants I've been experimenting with cherry bark (tannin, yellow), Camellia galls (tannin, light red), dock (oxalic acid, light green), bracken (potash, light green).

The dye plants are green alkanet (roots - red), curly dock (roots - yellow), nettles (leaves - green/brown), 3 species of Campanula (harebell, trailing bellflower and peach-leaved bellflower flowers - blue), beetroot (root - pink), wild strawberries (fruit - light pink), spinach (leaves - green/yellow), purple toadflax (flower - apple green), stargazer lilies (stamen - yellow), carrots (root - orange).

I have so far learned that Campanula flowers turn cotton and linen both a lovely shade of deep blue quite easily, curly dock root and cherry bark both make good yellows but nothing compared to stargazer lily stamen, things dyed with nettle turn brown when they touch the air even if it looks green in the bag, I can't figure out how to bring the black out in iris roots, and bracken mordant brings out the red in green alkanet root dye. And beetroot is unsurprisingly successful at dyeing things shocking pink, including many undesired things.

So. I count today's experiment as a success. I've taken some pictures of the process, will put some up of the final result.