Tuesday, October 21, 2014

Dyeing Yarn with Queen Anne's Lace

Another one of my natural dye experiments this summer was with Queen Anne's Lace.  In the summertime Queen Anne's Lace is a wildflower that flourishes in empty lots, along highways, and any other green space that does not get mowed.  These flowers remind me of spending summer "up north" at my grandparent's cottage as a kid.  They grew everywhere and where my favorite flowers to pick.  Now that I am making natural dyes, I knew I had to use Queen Anne's Lace somehow.
 
I started by going down to the railroad tracks one August day and cutting giant handfuls of Queen Anne's Lace like I was making a bouquet.  I needed at least 4 oz. of flowers to dye one skein of yarn.  Then I went through the cooking process, strained off the flowers, and dyed 3.5 oz. of wool mordanted in alum.  (You can read more about the dyeing process on my these previous posts.)
 

So far this has been my favorite dye as far as aroma.  Since Queen Anne's Lace is in the carrot family, it has a kind of spicy carrot scent while cooking.  The final product ended up being a light, bright yellow.  Stay tuned for more posts about ecodyeing!  I've dyed about 30 skeins of yarn this summer and fall, and now that the weather is cooler I'm catching up on my blogging.
 

2 comments:

The Honest Badger said...

So, if you had a couple of pounds of this, do you think it would be that dark orange color of the water? That would be a great color! Also, I want some of your eco dyed yarn!!!

minimeg said...

For this plant, increasing the amount of material would make the yellow color a little more intense. But at a certain point the color won't change anymore, no matter how much material you use. I got a great orange color from a different flower though!