[Moo] Dyeing with mushroms

[Bertran]

found this on a blog I follow called Haandkraft

Sent to you by Bertran via Google Reader: Dyeing with mushroms via
Haandkraft by Louise on 2/2/10
Winther have really got it´s strong hold on Denmark and for the moment
it seems like a very long time to spring and summer. I´m really missing
my plant dyeing and the colourfull yarns that it gives. Thankfully one
of my friends from our medieval group gave me a large amount of
mushroms in november in exchange for something nålebundet. I was
thrilled that she had picked so many which were enough to dye fabric in
the size of 1 m x 1,6 m.

So a couple of weeks ago I got the earge to dye and found the dryed
mushroms in the basement.

I have never dyed with mushroms before and didn´t know how many grams
to use for the 1 meter of fabric that I had. So this was kind of an
experiment - to see how much colour the mushroms gave.The mushrom that
I used is in danish called Cinnober-slørhat, and in latin Cortinarius
cinnabarinus. It should give a redish colour which I was quite excited
about since one of the only other plants that give red is madder.

Before dyeing I chopped the mushroms in to very small pieces and let
them soak in water for 24 hours. Mikkel surgested this so that I could
get as much colour out of the mushroms as possible. The colour soup
became very red as you can see in the pictures and when the fabric went
in it took in the colour very fast.


The result became much more dark in the colour than I had emagined but
this was a very good result. I was very surprissed to see how close to
madder the colouration really is.

There is some areas were you can see that the colourations is not
perfekt. This might have something to do with a to small pot were the
fabric wouldn´t more or/and that when I did the mordant I didn´t move
the fabric enough. I used the colour soup for a secound time and was
happy to see that this also gave some colour. I´m not sure that I´ll
use the yarns for medieval things, but I can use it for knitting
something moderne.

I´m really starting to want to dye again and thankfully I have some
dryed plants in the basment. Now we just need the snow and frost to go
away so that I can try my new modern gas cauldron that holds up to 60
liters.
Things you can do from here:
- Subscribe to Haandkraft using Google Reader
- Get started using Google Reader to easily keep up with all your
favorite sites
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.stierbach.org/pipermail/moo-stierbach.org/attachments/20100202/accc7dd4/attachment-0002.htm>