A few more experiments:
Bundle 5: silk, organza, thin cotton. Slices of radish, pieces of pomegranate, some bolted red cabbage leaves and a rooibos teabag sprinkled over the whole piece, around copper pipe. This had some success, except for the cabbage leaves that didn’t work at all, so I redyed the whole lot with the cotton on the inside as this had the fewest marks on it from the previous time: more radish slices (these were plants left in from last year, so quite woody, but they still yielded good impressions), 4 calendula flowers, dandelion flowers, leaves and root, pomegranate skins, pinch of black tea:
piece of silk fabric:
The radish is very clear and the yellow mainly from the dandelion and calendula.
organza:
I think the above two pieces are really successful. Silk does dye more easily than cotton with copper as the mordant.
The cotton was still not very interesting so I gave it a final 30 minute steam this time around a rusted iron pipe and some wire wool, with a little black tea, the same calendula flowers and pomegranate skins:
This is half the piece. The tannin of black tea certainly darkens the piece.
