So the results of my dyeing experiments….. Unfortunately, my experiments yesterday were not as successful as I had hoped they’d be (although I was already sceptical about the artichoke dye). From the spinach I had expected to get quite a bright green but the result was a vey pale yellowy green, pretty much just a tint on the white canvas that I dyed. The artichoke dyed fabric turned out to be a light brown so it really just looks like a dirty rag- I’m still surprised at this as I had read that artichoke and spinach produce some of the best green plant based dyes so I’m not sure if I did something wrong. Perhaps I didn’t boil the plant material for long enough, as I did opt for a quicker method. While researching into plant dyeing, I found that people either boiled the plant material for around an hour before adding the fabric and boiling for another hour, or the plant is boiled for a shorter time like 20-30 minutes. I chose to try the shorter time as I thought that the pigment might dull after boiling it for hours as this usually happens to vegetables when cooking in general.
Today I will carry on researching into different dyes and possibly different methods to try out over the weekend, hopefully with more success. I really need to produce a green colour as this is essential to my topic, but I will also look into other colours too and using different fabrics.
an.andycaptures 