Dyeing with Clay and other earth pigments

A few years ago I dug out out our spring head which had collapsed in, and in the process separated out some lovely blue and some orange clay. Unfortunately the blue clay got lost (there wasn't very much, but I've been meaning to dye some cloth with the orange clay for ages and finally got round to it recently. I was given some new white cotton t shirts as a present to have a go at this.
The method I used was this:

First I washed the new shirts in the washing machine with soda crystals

I then soaked them in home made soya milk and dried them well.

One of the shirts I soaked in a solution of the clay and also painted a design onto it. Another shirt I tied some string tightly round bunches  of the material before soaking in the clay solution.

Both shirts were left a couple of weeks until thoroughly dry.

I then rinsed the shirts in slightly vinegary water (I didn't have much distilled vinegar left) since I had read somewhere that this might help fix the colour, before several rinses in clean warm water.

I then washed the shirts on a "delicate" cycle in the washing machine with no detergent.

The final results have a pleasant orangey beige colour. The tie-died shirt originally had areas that were quite white, but these have taken up some colour during the final rinsing and washing. You can still see the 'flowers' of the tie-dye pattern fairly well though. The other shirt is more uniform in colour and the painted design is not very clear (it was a map of Skye with some writing around it). It looks like there is a chromatographic pattern from the painting - by this I mean that the pigment has spread and there might be some interesting effects that could be made this way.
The shirts still have a rather pleasant clay smell to them, and I'm expecting the colour to fade further with washing. I still have one more shirt which I'm thinking of trying to dye with peat on the hills.
Has anyone else tried dyeing with earth pigments and has experiences to share?

Nancy, thank you for sharing your clay dyeing project.

I am sorry that you lost the blue clay as that would have been really fun to see.

I feel the orange turned out a lovely color.

Pretty! I haven't done clay-dying, but the woman who runs the most local Saori weaving studio also teaches clay-dying and I've thought about taking an intro course.

Our clay is similar in color! haven't tried (intentionally) dyeing anything with it, but i have plenty of things that have been stained....

Talking about dyeing with mud makes me think of mud cloth from Mali, I worked in a museum during college and we had an artesan come show us how it was done, I still have some mud cloth around here somewhere that I got at an art fair. Gorgeous!!!

Tereza Okava wrote:Our clay is similar in color! haven't tried (intentionally) dyeing anything with it, but i have plenty of things that have been stained....

Yes that was my thought too. If prestained the dirt wouldn't show so much! The colour of the t shirt has turned out a lovely peach colour. Time will tell how stable it is.

Talking about dyeing with mud makes me think of mud cloth from Mali, I worked in a museum during college and we had an artesan come show us how it was done, I still have some mud cloth around here somewhere that I got at an art fair. Gorgeous!!!

I had to look up Mali mud cloth. That looks a far more complex procedure than I used! Afroculture has a bit of an explanation, and a bit more detail at craft atlas: