Natural Dyeing with Marigolds
Last winter when I sat by the fire to plan out the coming farm season, I decided to try some new marigold varieties. For the past few years I’ve grown an African Variety that I’m really pleased with but I was interested in trying some different colored varieties to see if they would yield different dye shades. A few weeks ago I tested the different varieties on an organic cotton hemp blend fabric. I mordanted with gall tannin, then alum and soda ash (tutorial here). I set up 4 dye baths with each marigold variety using marigolds at 35% in each bath. I was happy to discover that the different marigold varieties each yielded a slightly different shade.
On the left Court Jester marigolds yielded a buttery yellow shade, Burgundy Bliss marigolds yielded a green-yellow shade, Strawberry Blonde marigolds yielded a sweet canary yellow color, and the African marigolds yielded a darker yellow.
An after dye ferrous bath at 3% WOF shifted the African marigold yellow to an olive green- gray. I’m so happy with these shades and I’m looking forward to experimenting more with them on wool yarn. I’ll be sure to share the results here!
