Natural Dyeing with camellia petals Empire 2 ply superwash

 Sydney is in an ongoing lockdown......so to entertain myself i have started a round of dyeing.  i'd read somewhere a while ago that someone had dyed wool with camellia flowers so i've been planning to do this for a couple of years. It's now towards the end of the camellia season here, so i realised i had to get a move on or have to wait another year....

I collected a small pot's worth of the strongest coloured red petals i could find on foraging trips  near where i live in Sydney, all within the allowed excercise parameters of lockdown-lite (a big thank you to the house holders whose trees overhang the fence). i froze them to destroy the cell structure and then heated them a few times in tap water to about 50-60degreesC over 2 days. the local tap water is around pH7. Quite a reasonable amount of colour came out, so in went four hanks of the the alum + cream of tartar -mordanted -Empire-2ply-superwash-merino that i am using as my favourite go-to option. It handles my mistreatments with tolerance and aplomb! I've tried a few other wools sourced here and Iceland but i find the Empire takes up colour the best and usually retains a lovely softness. I've also tried the Morris and Sons alpaca and it's lovely but never developes the deeper colours like the Empire. 

 The pH of the coloured liquor had dropped to around 3.7 at this stage and the heat to around 60 degrees at least at the start......

Empire 2 ply (Morris & Sons) wool dyed with camellia petals

the first three hanks from right to left: 10mins, 20mins, 50mins. nice graduations of bright lavender blue to a medium greyish lavender. Then by accident i let the pot reach boiling and the fourth hank was taken out at 2 hours and is this most delicious dark blue-green. The camera just won't give the right tone but it does give a hint. Also popped in the bits of wool blanket which was a chopped up an old pastel striped type and the two pieces show different colours based on the original pale blue and pinky colours.

There was still colour left in the pot, so i decided to raise the pH by adding some carb soda: i got to pH8.7 and then added the 5th hank and got a paler steely bluish-green with some brown bits dotted through. a bit dull & boring, but still an interesting experiment. I rinsed the hank in pH8.3 water so the colour would stay, but it did change a bit. If i ever get enough petals i could investigate this further but that will have to wait til next year now as the camellias in question have finished.....*

i finally put the last 2 hanks in as an exhaust run and got tan:  the colour was all pretty well used up by then. How much tan can a girl need? i recon i have more shades of tan than anyone could need. That's the last two hanks on the left showing the tan.

*my night rider camellia is a late flower type just coming into bloom in august and it has beautiful deep blood-clot red coloured flowers; I'm collecting them but it will be only enough for one hank, maybe two, as the bush and the flowers are small!.

Using my dyed threads at last for embroidery

 Finally getting around to posting something again......the real problem has been the photo quality: getting colours right is not so easy so i tend to give up. And colour is important! especially for embroidery.

Anyway here is my first go at embroidery using my dyed wool threads.  It's based on my own  photo of Buðir on Snæfellsnes.

you get an idea anyway of my slapdash methods.  

The blacks and darkish greys for the building and basalt walls are from liriope berries (a very lucky dye lot! usually get prussian blue shades from the liriope), the grass is purple onion skin caught early so it is quite an acid chartreuse green. 

Most of the threads are the Empire 2 ply (Morris & Sons) which works really well for embroidery. i used some thick sewing thread for the fine lines of the the church wood panneling. I've used a linen seviette from an op shop as my base fabric. There are lots of them to be found for around $1.