Dyeing Silk with Sour Grass

After the rains we have plenty of sour grass growing around in San Jose. Today I decided to do some dyeing. I used the recipe in Sasha Duerr's book, The Handbook of Natural Plant Dyes. White silk organza and a few silk charmeuse scarfs were soaked overnight in alum and cream of tartar. The fabrics came out florescent yellow. I put some cotton and linen test strips in the pot also. After soaking in the dye pot overnight, I washed them in water and gentle soap; the bright yellow turned to an olive green during the rinsing. The cotton and linen that had no mordant stayed yellow.

For Val

This is first in a series of pieces that I plan to create, in memory of a dear friend of mine.

Sewing for Ashleigh & Nick

Wedding gift to match the Fiestaware dish color lemongrass and turquoise. Fabrics found to match at Harts Fabrics in Santa Cruz. Placemats are reversible with the flip side made of a solid turquoise linen. The patterned side is made up of cottons. Hope they bring brightness to their new apartment in SF.

Loving this green

Test strip on garage floor

Linen, previously eco printed with some Indigo overprint.
Looking for a darker blue for the next layer of color.

T 

Chopstick for resist

Sample looked interesting on the garage floor

Dyeing a silk stripped scarf

Thai silks in Los Altos is a great place to shop for RTD
(ready to dye) fabrics. On various visits they gave away a free scarf with a purchase, I have ended up with three of them. The stripes are chiffon and charmeuse. This striped scarf was something I would not have picked, so I was challenged to do something interesting with this one. I decided to do a thread resist Katano shibori technique, that was described in Yoshiko Wada's book.

Indigo with Ecoprints

This piece was created in Irit Dulman's class a few weeks ago, I was not able to finish. Today I decided to over dye with Indigo. My Indigo dye vat was started at a "free dip day" Margaret Leininger sponsored in June 2013 at the Kala Institute in Berkeley, California. I gladly took this 5 gallon vat home, and it continues to work for me with some refreshing. Very pleased that the eco prints are preserved and I love the dark contrast of the blue. When I wash it, it will lighten some.