How does one choose what the first post on a blog should be? I haven’t had a blog in a very long time, I truly don’t remember.
I decided to let it be a post about some recent nature dyeing experiments I’ve been doing. It feels very close to the reason I decided to create a blog in 2025, the age of fast paced social media and 15 second video content, so why not.
I want to clarify that I’m no expert; I have a plot of land, a pot of hot water and a love for keeping things as natural as possible.
For this test, I harvested a whole bunch of dandelions. Since I harvested in July, there were no flowers left, instead I harvested leaves and roots. I decided to use them separately, to see if there were any specific colours that could only be acheived with either one of them.
Colours were generally as expected, with yellows and greens for the leaves and yellow beiges for the roots.
In order from left to right we have (first leaves, then roots, in the same order)
- neutral, no modification
- acidic modifier
- alkaline modifier
- copper modifier
- iron modifier
The one that stands out the most is (as usual) the iron one, with strong, dark colours. I’m very fond of the dark green from the leaves + iron, and did a small lightfastness test. I hung a tuft of it in the window for a week, during a time when we had strong sunshine 12+ hours a day, and noticex no visible change in the colour at all. Iron is supposed to make dyes more lightfast, but I’ve not done any comparison to the unmodified samples.
Either way, this is a very pleasing result from a weed that’s easily available and … continue reading “Dandelion dye experiments”
