Madder and Weld

Naturally dyed 4 skeins of Flying Goat Farm 2 ply yarn with Madder and Weld.  I mordanted the skeins with Alum a couple of days before. They were kept wet and cool in a recloseable bag in the fridge.  I used Earthhues extracts for this set of samples.  With these extracts, you can reproduce colors with natural dyes, which can be hard to do with the plant stuffs themselves.

I planted 2 boxes of Madder 2 years ago. They produce large ground cover type plants with tiny flowers.  I dug up a few of the roots to see how hard it will be to divide the plants. I would love to make small transplants to give my dyeing enthusiast friends.

The roots were washed and then cut into bits. A dye stock was made with them by simmer the pot for an hour. The dye looked really dark.  But the dyed yarn so far is quite light.  We used Jenny Dean's formula of equal parts dye plant and fiber.  To achieve the same color as the extract, there will need to be significantly more roots used.  I will update this as we continue with that experiment.

This yarn is madder extract at 4% WOF. There was still visible dye so I was able to over dye another skein...more about that below.

This is our weld plants. I will be harvesting this plant later and trying it as a direct dye. The bright yellow color is found in the leaves and stems.

This skein was dyed with 5% WOF weld extract. The dye bath was nearly exhausted.

This skein was dyed in the madder pot. I took it out, rinsed it and placed it back into the weld pot to simmer. It is just slightly oranger than the madder by itself.

This last skein was dyed in the weld pot.  It was the same bright yellow as the skein above. I rinsed it and placed it in the madder pot.  It is a lovely nearly orange color.