Dyeing with native plants

Playing with persimmon leaf extract.

I love following this thread May!
Wonderful results and documentation

The woad looks great...and that looks like holy basil, tulsi.  I must have confused the tulsi seed with the weld I intended to send.  It is a lovely 'tea' basil though and sometimes reseeds.
Try the weld seed in the pkt that was late...it should be correct.

I use the entire arial parts of the plant for the dye, not just the flowers, so when I've gathered it for drying I do get the little seed fluffs, but the remaining stems and leaves still dye well. The fluffs probably help too, I just chuck the entire bag of dry stuff in!

May Lotito wrote:Hi Pink, your yarns are so very colorful! It's a brilliant idea to have those ombre colors on fabric. I ordered some purified red and blue pigments too, and tannic acid, for quantification purpose.

I have inconsistent results with my golden aster and the flowers don't dry well, they turn into seed balls before they can get dry! It's nice you can have yours as a reliable dye plant.

I am not doing a lot of real dyeing yet. I want to harvest enough materials to play with later in winter. Different parts of the plant have different pigments and they can various in stability and/or heat and pH sensitivity too. Another flower I have in abundance is bicolor marigold. The petals have mostly carotenoid and anthocyanine, the former is not water soluble and the latter changes color with pH and also not stable by itself. The center disc flowers yield a soft yellow color in neutral to high pH, I guess it's from the flavonoid of yellow pollens. If I use the whole flower, color will be muted and changes over time. Similarly in goldenrod, using the whole inflorescence with stems gives a duller golden tone and the yellow flowers themselves actually dye cotton pale green (again not light fast by itself). I am considering drying both whole flowers and parts separately. Check these out.

Soy milk is $5 per half gallon here but there is no dry soy beans in the grocery store. I checked out other beans, they all have about half the protein level (20%) compared to soy bean ( avg 40%). So I picked the navy beans because they are small and white at about $1.50 per pound.

I did a small test and the results are quite interesting. The navy bean milk does help with stabilizing colors that are pH sensitive. Those vibrant colors of yellow orange and red from tickseed sunflower all fade into apricot after washing (1:500 w/v 30 min, pH=7). With protein pretreated fabric, the colors are more vibrant and resistant, especially with dyeing in low pH.

In the midwest, a good orange can be obtained from Beggar Ticks, a three lobed leaf, I have Bidens tripartita, here are cut flowers and leaves.  Colorful tree leaves and garden herbs also make good dye.  Marigolds are great but a bit smelly.  You may have wild mugwort and maybe, unfortunately, have invasive stilt grass.  The grass can give a nice tans and golden color.  I am playing with pairing it with morning glory flowers.  I am finally getting some nice blues from this color of flower attached.  Work outside when using strong smelling herbs and definitely with other plants.  Roses when unsprayed give different colors for me on cotton, silk and bamboo.  Peony leaves make great prints.  I do not know how my water reacts to the plants.  I use tap water set out to release chlorine.  I am using alum mordant for my best dye results.  Good experimenting.

The mention of soy milk in some posts above reminded me that years ago I did some playing with John Marshall's methods for using soy milk as a binder for natural dyes.  
He says that after two weeks of drying and curing the treated cloth will resist rather than bind the natural dyes so should dye the cloth soon after treating.  
Here's his page for making and using soy milk made from dry soy beans...
https://www.johnmarshall.to/soymilk-page

Thom Bri wrote:Mary, have you tried purple corn?

If you haven't thrown your purple corn cobs to a compost pile, you may be able to make some money from natural dyers! There are loads of pigments in the cobs and they are much easier to extract than from the husks. I ate a few ears as sweet corns and reused the cobs for dyeing. All these colors came out of them! I am surprised why purple corn isn't a more popular source of natural dye.

I have lots and lots of purple cobs and husks. One thing I do NOT need is another hobby!

Asian markets will have soybeans and a variety of soybean products.

@Pink: I should've thought about using more plant parts besides blossoms. After all, those pigments are synthesized before blooming in the leaves. I remembered once I used partridge pea leaves because bumble bees love the flowers and I got gorgeous bright yellow color. Later I picked more leaves, without noticing the blooming was over and seed pods were growing and I couldn't repeat the result.

@thom: those pigments can be used for food coloring too, not just dyeing. BTW, are corn with pigmented flour have the color showing since early stage? The morado kernel's purple color is only skin deep, inside is still white atcdough stage.

@Patricia: are you using green persimmon fruits for dyeing bags? The American persimmon fruits are so small and high up the tree, how did you collect them in large quantity? I like using leaves more, I have made quite a few dye sample pieces out of the first pound of fresh leaves I picked 3 weeks ago. Extract has been at room temperature at all time without getting moldy.