This ‘longer than anticipated’ bit is apparently the theme of the project. But I did get two of the colors done.

I have one tshirt and two napkins (both 100% cotton) to dye in each of the four colors. The kit I got had you first soak them with gallnut for tannins, then with alum as mordant, and I did all of the shirts and napkins together at the same time. I worked on turning the powders into potions while that went on.

For each of the four colors, I first did one napkin and one tshirt in the dye. Once those hung out in the dye for a couple hours, I took them out and did one more napkin in the same dye again.

I did the osage first, and it made a lovely lemony yellow. The tshirt is on the bottom, then the napkin that got dyed with the shirt, then the napkin that dyed second. The stuff in the little bowl on top is the osage itself (in this case it’s basically sawdust).

The cochineal was next, and it came out somewhere between pink and purple. Again, tshirt on the bottom, napkin that went in the pot with the shirt next, and finally the napkin that went in on its own at the end to take up more of the color. The bowl has, well, has the teeny tiny crushed up bugs that are cochineal (they look more like poppy seeds than bugs, but the idea is still kinda creepy). One does wonder how someone figured out they’d turn fabric pretty colors.

In both cases I like the colors, but I wish they were brighter and more intense. I suspect part of that is my current lack of knowledge (I’m sure there are things I could have done differently to get more intense colors), and part of it is that natural dyes are just like that.

But I needed a weekend project. And I’d had the kit for ages and kept meaning to play with it. But I also have a tendency to think ‘oh, I need to read every thing about every aspect of any project before I begin or else I won’t do it right,’ which is fine for some things, but does slow down the pace of new projects. But I’m working on that, so this time I decided to try ‘eh, just play with what you have, and if you enjoy it, then you can learn more and try again later.’

And so while it’s likely I could have gotten slightly stronger colors had I done more reading first, there’s no way to tell when that would have happened. Certainly not this past weekend. And this way? Well this way I had a fun project, I’ll soon have (when the laundering is done) four freshly enhanced tshirts and 8 colorful napkins, and I’ll know what I want to learn more about for next time.