Alkanet - the Mediterranean sometimes purple dye

 Everything I've been told and read about alkanet since I first heard of it is that it is tricky.  It might give you a purple, it might give you a blue.  It will probably give you a grayish color.  Maybe.  Even Jenny Dean had problems with it which did not give me much hope.  Still, I figured I'd play with it.  

First thing I did was use the sake I ended up not likely and mixed that with half the jug of powdered alkanet I got from Anne George's.  I put this slug into a tubberware container and just left it under the bathroom sink for a couple of weeks.  I might try cheap vodka next time to see if that affects the results at all.  

Then, I took it out and put the slug into the dye put.  I used some of Wildcraft dyeing's advice on PH levels as I wanted purple!  I added 75%~80% vinegar to the normal water and got a PH of 2...which was way too acidic.  I did get it to stay at 4.5~5.5 after adding some baking soda.   Yes, lots of fizziness when adjusting the PH level.  

Once the pot was hot but not boiling, I cleared out as much of the alkanet slug with the mesh colander as I could.  It didn't get it all out but it did get most of it.  Only after most of it was out did I add the fibers.

For this experiment, I did two skeins of wool, one of natural linen, and even a yard of silk taffeta.  The silk isn't in the picture since it really came out far too light.  I think if I try this again, I leave the silk in for a few days and see what happens.   

I used alum on all of them.  I have no idea why the top skein and the middle one, both wool, are two different colors.  Honestly, the top one is the color of my parent's car when I was a kid.  It wasn't brown and it wasn't purple.  It was something inbetween and we could never figure it out.  The middle one is straight up lavender.  It's hard to tell in this photo but it's very lavender in person.   The linen really didn't catch the dye but does have a very slight tone now to it.   

Anyone have any theories on why the two wools came out two different colors?  Maybe different sheep?  I did get the wools from two different companies...

The case of Paisley from a Medieval and Renaissance perspective

There is a lot of mythology around the paisley print. Some say it has ancient origins but came to the West in the 16th C. Others argue that it wasn't a thing in Europe until the 18th century. This is evident in multiple blog posts on the subject of paisleys.

Taken from Toast Magazine

I personally had been told the "no paisley in the medieval and Renaissance period" so many times, I figured it must be true.  Afterall, the closest thing I found for a while was this 17th century portrait which is just outside of the SCA period:

Taken from Tate

However, it looks like it's another "word" problem, similar to the word "pink".   Pink as a color existed in the SCA period but the word pink to *mean* the color did not.  The same seems to go for the word paisley.  

Paisley, in the SCA period, means the Scottish town which is just outside of Glasgow.  I've been to it and through it a few times.  It's a lovely manufacturing town which, as many sources suggest, is where the design paisley got it's name from when the weavers in the town Paisley started to turn out the design in the 18th century.   

Before that?  I'm not sure if there is an English name for it.  However, the design itself did exist in Europe well within the SCA period. Here is the evidence:

Taken from the Cleveland Museum

The above is a piece of silk lampas, manufactured in the second half of the 14th century...in Italy.  Those big green things below the heraldic dogs certainly look like paisleys to me!   To show it's not a one off, look above the back of the bird's head in this next 14th century piece.

Taken from the V&A Museum

It's also a fun one since it was made in Iran - where we know they did have paisley designs in the 14th and 15th centuries- but used in 14th century Germany for a dalmatic.  This also seems to be the more popular form of the paisley design as it shows up, again, in 14th Century Italy.

Taken from the V&A Museum

The more modernly common paisley shows up again in Italy in the 16th century.

Taken from the MET

As well as in 16th century Spain!

Taken from the MET

And one last late 14th century one that is Italian made, but found in France.

Taken from the V&A

Really, it looks like the paisley was fairly popular in 14th C Europe, though it is a part of other designs.  Hopefully, this will be helpful for anyone else trying to document the paisley into the later medieval period and up into the Renaissance era.   Now, I can safely say that even the design elements on my sari turned 1490's gown are period correct.  :-)

Red Onion Dye - a somewhat failed experiment

 Yesterday, I tried to dye with red onions and....it was a fail.  I should have read Rebecca Desnos' blog post before starting on my own dye pot.  Instead, all I got was brown.  A lovely, soft brown with a reddish tinge in the case of the alum mordant wool but brown.  

The linen pretty much didn't dye.  The alum linen (top of the photo) does have a very slight burnished green hint to it.  The natural linen I used an iron mordant (bottom of the photo) on is still...natural.  The alum mordant wool is almost an auburn/light brown color and probably will make a funny winter hat for next year.  The iron mordant wool just looks blah.  Parts where there was still iron on the yarn (I didn't rinse it and that really showed) are dark gray to almost black.  So, maybe, it might make a good black if I use iron water in the dye pot?

Above is an image of the onion skins after I had exhausted them.  I used one plastic grocery bag full of purple onion skins.

The resulting dye was a rather fabulous reddish purple.  I was hoping to get a nice burgundy or maroon from the dye bath but alas!

Everything was turning yellow!   I checked the ph and it was 6.8.  That was when I looked up Rebecca's blog.  I figured a yellow or army green - as it was coming up at the time- would at least be pretty interesting.  However, I forgot about the heat on the oven and went upstairs, got distracted, and came down to a paraboil (it was probably another few minutes from boiling!).  Somehow, that activated what little soap I accidentally left in the pot and....

Yeah, lots and lots of soap bubbles!   This affected the ph which suddenly shot up to 8.1!  I ended up trying to get the dye pot's ph down to see if I could get a good green or red out of it and added 75% vinegar solution to it.  It went down to 4.

So I thought with this image, I'd get a neat orange.  The dye was completely exhausted when I let it sit through the night.  However, when I pulled the yarns out, the linen suddenly didn't have a color and the wools were brown.

Alum mordant on linen and wool

Iron mordant on wool and natural linen

I will redye the linen (probably in the alkanet solution I have sitting) and see how that goes.   I have more wool to dye and a big piece of linen.  I think the big piece of linen will go into another madder pot!

Reupholstering an old footstool

 Not my normal type of post but I am working on stuff.  :-)  I have had this old footstool for a few years and keep it at work, normally.   

I bought it for €5 in Italy and wasn't too concerned about how kitschy it looked.  It's clearly 1990s and well, it needed a refresh.   First, I took the rope trim off the footstool.  I realized after taking the rope trim off that the rope trim and the fabric were pretty well glued down.  I decided to keep the fabric on it footstool, mostly, and just use it to help keep the new stuffing in place rather than mostly sew down the new fabric and stuff it that way.  

It became very, very stuffed.  

I then stapled on a rather nice golden tan cotton velvet I had on hand.  I just folded the edges under and used an upholster staple gun - which I found out are pretty cheap.  In order to make the footstool fancy, I gathered a blue lace I had in the stash and wanted to add it as a skirt.  The plan was to add another trim on top of that and I found a fabulous fringe that went perfectly.

The finished footstool!   I sewed the fringe trim and the gathered lace to the velvet.  The corners are far from perfect but this is for work so my ability to care too much is gone.  I just wanted it to look fancy.  :-)

Madder Dye

 

I've had this jar of dried madder for probably three years now, at least.  It may be longer than that.  I've read that old madder won't dye and I've also read that old madder gives the best reds.   I figured I could sacrifice some of the yarn I have and see what I end up with.

This time, I dyed three wools and two linens.  One of the wools and the natural linen were given an iron mordant and the others were all dunked into the alum mordant.  I wanted to see if it would give me different shades or even different colors.   For the iron, I just used old SOS pads that had rusted.   I keep them in a small bowl after I do the dishes.   

The dye pot once again looks like spaghetti.  I had the water and white vinegar mix at 70°C before I turned the gas off the stove.  I just left the lid on the pot and waited for three hours to see what colors I might get.   

This is just the wools after I rinsed them. They looked very, very Christmas red and Turkey Red!   The linens didn't have much color so I left them overnight.   I'm so glad I did.   I also overdyed the onion skin wool that wasn't as bright as the others.  

From left to right, madder with alum, madder with alum, madder with iron, linen madder with iron, and linen madder with alum.  I need to show a close up of the linens because they are fabulous pinks!!!

This is more true to the color in person.  The natural linen with an iron mordant came out a nice mauve and the bleached linen with an alum mordant came out petal pink!   I'm really happy with the way those came out.

All the yarns I've dyed this week!   There is the two linens with the onion skin dye, one wool with the onion skin dye, the wool I originally dyed with onion skin and then overdyed with madder, plus all the madder yarns!   I'm not in love with the overdye.  It looks more burnt siena in person than the flesh tone it shows here.  However, I think it will go really well with some of the other yarns I have as a secondary color.   

Besides, getting pink on linen really is the best part of all this experiment!

Onion dye!

 I'm going to try and restart this blogging thing.  My first finished crafty thing of the year is dyeing with yellow onion skins!   I've seen some pretty amazing oranges when other people have tried it and figured I'd give it a go myself.  

My local grocery store isn't the best at cleaning the produce stands, which is lucky for me.  I'd go there, buy an onion and fill the plastic bag they had with the one onion and as much of the loose onion skins lying on the table as possible.  After a few weeks of just going in and buying an onion when I needed it for dinner plus a bag of loose onion skins, I had enough to dye with.   

Above are the experimental yarns for dyeing.  The top is natural undyed linen, the second is bleached linen, the middle is a silk and wool blend that I ended up not dyeing, and the last two are wools.  I have no idea where the silk and wool blend ended up.  I went from the dining room to the kitchen and it disappeared.  Likely, I took it with me when I went downstairs to let the pup out and put it down somewhere there.   I'll find it eventually but, because I lost it, it did not get dyed.

I filled my dye pot about half way with water and then threw four bags of onion skins in.   This was the look.  I then turned the stove on and heated the water until it was just steamy, followed by leaving it on low for about an hour.

This was the result after an hour.  I turned the stove off and then put the lid on the pot to leave it for a bit longer. During this time, I put the yarns into a bowl with alum and water to get them ready to dye.   I had washed the yarns earlier to get rid of any oils.  One yarn smelled heavily of sheep after that.  

Two hours after adding the onion skins, I took the skins out of the dye pot.  I just used my basket colander scoop the skins out and throw them away.  I missed a couple of skins but it got most of them out without the need for two different pots.  The dye looked to be a very lovely red when I finished but, really, as you will see, it becomes very, very orange!

The dye pot with the yarn looks like some sort of weird spaghetti.  I let the yarns soak in the pot for about an hour and then heated it back up gently for five minutes (just until there was steam) before leaving them for another half hour.

The final colors!   I will add a picture when they are completely dry (this was just the plastic box to carrier them to a place where they could dry!) but I wanted to show the good oranges I did end up with.   The linen dyed exceptionally well!  It's the wool that is the paler of the yarns.   I don't think I got all the lanolin out of it which might be part of the problem.  Still, not a bad color. 

I did rinse the yarns in cold water before I took the photo.  

The color is a bit more yellow now that it has dried.  In person, it is a very lovely goldenrod color for each of the yarns.  The brightest is the bleached linen - second from the bottom.  The very bottom of the photo is the natural linen.  The top is the wool I'm not sure I got all the lanolin out of which might have affected how well the dye took to it.  

Of these, I'm going to overdye the top and bottom yarns in the photo with madder or another red at some point.  

Cabbage dye and Avocado dye

 

The results of my red cabbage dye experiment last month!

The yarn came out pretty variegated but that was my own fault.  I still like the colors and it's sort of a "sea glass" blue in person.  I might try the cabbage again with a couple of other tricks, such as using baking soda to change up the color.  My Mom *loves* the pale blue of the linen. She wants to paint her room that color!

Sadly, the avocado dye experiment last month didn't work out quite as well.  This was before I even rinsed the yarn fully.  Once it was fully rinsed, both the wool yarn and the linen fabric became....white again.  There really wasn't a drop of color that adhered to it.  

So, this time I decided to try a different method.  Rather than leaving three avocado pits in a jar of vinegar and water to make a dye, I just put 14 avocado pits in a big ole soup pot with a lot of water and simmered it.  

At first, it seemed like it was going the same way as the avocado vinegar experiment until I tested the PH of the water.  For some reason, it was only 5!  I added a lot of baking soda and got the PH at least up to 6.5.   

After simmering the pits for about 3 hours, I added the wool yarn (the same one I used in the previous because, seriously, zero color), and left that to simmer for an hour before I took it off the heat.  I then left the yarn in the dye pot overnight.  Below is what color it is now!

In person, it's a fabulous light mauve that I'm very happy with.  Also, the dye vat smells 100% better than the cabbage vat did.  :-)  I'll post pictures of it when it dries to see fully what color it ends up.