from the solar dye pot

I took these pieces out of the dye jars. I couldn't wait any longer; I figure a week is a good amount of time before things start to go smelly. 

The pinks are some silk, that seems to be tearing - perhaps age. One piece was wrapped with pomegranate seeds within it, the other had moss fallen from our tree (old mans beard?) and red /pink camellia flowers. Both were in the same jar with pomegranate skin, moss and a creek rock - mainly to weigh the fabrics down. The rock went a beautiful deep almost black colour.

The purple is from avocado skin. Also wrapped within the folds of the fabric was coffee and tea discards. I also put fire ash on top. This is hemp / organic cotton fabric that I had previously (as in a year+ ago!) stitched with silk thread. There are lovely little speckles from the coffee grains within the purple shades. And little bits of brownish as well. I did put some old rusty falling apart metal sheeting - not sure if that actually made much difference or not. 

I know that I put too many different things in one pot, to get clear conclusions of what gives what colour, etc. But as it's the first dyeing I've done for a while I was excited to just be putting things in. Now that I have some lovely, pleasing results (and not just mucky brown), I'm going to start being more methodical in my process. Here goes with the journalling.... 

*note: these pieces hung in the Winter sun for a full day, and faded quite dramatically. The were not pre- or post-mordanted at all. So, I'll be doing some more experimenting with what to use to keep the colour strong and not fade so easily. I've sent Sam into town searching for some alum.