Sunshine

In the midst of a dreary winter, we are all looking for a bit of sunshine. I found mine in a dye pot this weekend.

My community garden pulled up some marigolds leftover from the summer planting. I quickly pulled them out of the compost bin and clipped all the blooms off and brought them home.

I had about 80g of blooms and put them into a pot to simmer, then steep for about 4+ hours.

I pulled out approximately 160g of cellulose fabric (cotton, bamboo bedsheet, cotton/linen blends). This is about 2:1 fiber to fresh marigold. Most of the instructions out there said 4:1 WOF to dried marigold but very little information about using fresh marigold. Best guess was about 1:1. I thought maybe I’ll get a medium yellow.

Look at these gorgeous results! The color is still not quite right but the color is a nice deep gold. I didn’t try for a even tone and wanted some tonal variations.

Clockwise from top left: unbleach muslin; old bamboo (?) bedsheet; cotton gauze, pleated, twisted, and bound with rubber bands; cotton canvas strip, cotton/linen blend

I saved the spent marigold, pulled them apart and layered them between fabric layers. You can see how much color is still left in the blossoms. They left color as soon as they touched my mordanted fabric.

Right/top fabric is the side that touched the blossoms directly. The bottom/left is the “back” side of the fabric where the color soaked through. The imprints are not as crisp and the color not as saturated, but it’s still there. I think both sides are usable depending on what you are looking for.

Fabric prep: I washed the fabric in Dharma Trading’s Professional Textile Detergent and then simmered in 10% alum solution.

And for more sunshine, I’ll leave you a picture of of Meyer Lemon tree. The branches are drooping down to the ground with all the fruit on them.