I guess it's not all that surprising that I got green from purple irises. Everything I read about using them has resulting in green. I was excited to do a little science experiment though. Could I coax a color other than green to stick to the yarn from this deep purple liquid? And my playing around with water pH and the addition of alum to get four completely different colors was encouraging... I had to press on. <-- This will link you to my previous blog post that started this whole thing.
The short answer is no. But let me quickly walk you through what I did and my thought process. I saw during a previous dye session that purple water will dye green with heat. So perhaps it'll stay purple without heat? But will the yarn take the purple color without heat? As I talked about in my last post, when you add alum to the purple it turns it bright blue! I'm down with blue. Really I was going for anything but green. I like green well enough but if you look through natural dyeing books you quickly see that yellow and green are two of the easiest colors to get. So no offense to the Green is the Only Color Worth Being a Color facebook group, GREEN GREEN GREEN llc, and I Love Green all other Colors Suck. inc (ILGAOCS, inc for short of course).
Okay, so my method. I started out with three test mini skeins. This first I think I talked about in my last post. I can't recall, so let me refresh me memory. I soaked a skein in alum, then I put some purple water in a jar and, lazily, poured the alum-soaking water into the purple. And the water instantly turned blue! During my last post I did duplicate this result to confirm that purple iris color turns bright blue in the presence of alum. So then I took the other two skeins and soaked one in alum and one in just plain water. Then I rinsed the alumed skein very well to try and remove as much excess alum as possible in an attempt to kept the water purple. The last skein did not get mordanted. I figured this was a long shot, but worth a try. What's the worst that can happen? I end up with undyed white yarn?
Here is where we are so far:
3 skeins on worst weight non-superwash Merino
#1- alumed and alum-soaking water into the purple dye bath --> turned bright blue
#2- alumed and rinsed. Fresh water used in dye bath --> turned bright blue when yarn was added
#3- un-mordanted skien soaked in plain water. Purple dye bath diluted with fresh water. --> dye bath stayed purple
Skein #1 was put in the dye bath a day earlier than the other two. This skein soaked for a week with a few gentle heatings
Skeins #2 & #3 were in the bath for 6 days. They did get warmed by the sun for the last 4 (It was rainy the first 2)
The Results!
The bad news first- Skein #3 took no color at all. Not unexpected for sure. I didn't bother photographing this one because... its white yarn...
The better news- Skeins #1 & #2 are not longer white! They are a pale, lovely neon green... if those three words can be used all at once to describe green. Really it is great color! The skein that was gently heated and in the bath an extra day is a tad darker than skein #2. But no purple or blue to speak of. Now I will leave part of one of these skeins in the sun to test color-fastness. That won't take long with this intense Colorado sun!
(Like a good scientist) Conclusions:
I am not convinced that the purple from irises can be used as dye for wool. I am certainly not the first to try and I just haven't seen any success (please prove me wrong!) The purple color in the un-mordanted skein only lasted in the jar for about a day and a half. After that there was nearly no color left in the water and there was no color on the yarn! Of course there are different mordants to try and maybe different methods. It would be so cool if someone could figure out how to capture that intense purple!