Elderberry dye soup
The Elberberries were out in full bloom a couple of weeks ago and I decided that it was time to try some more berry dyeing. I still didn’t have a regular mordant like Alum so once again I turned to the tutorial ‘Making Natural Dyes from Plants‘ for their instructions on using salt as a mordant. I had a go with the same wool I used last time for the Blackberry dyeing and I am at the moment knitting up some berry socks by making stripes with the two yarns. As I had quite a large amount of Elderberries I decided to have a go at dyeing this pink raw silk fabric I had lying around. I like the colour it turned out but I did make one mistake though. I learned later that when dyeing silk you shouldn’t boil it as silk goes hard when it reaches higher temperatures. My piece of silk did go slightly hard but nevermind. I still used the silk piece to sew myself the Bubbly Berry Skirt which you can see on my blog ‘Grey Duckling‘.
Before and after dyeing raw silk with Elderberry
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[...] was going to do a bit of dyeing with elderberries for Historic Crafts and decided to try it out on this piece of raw silk I had lying around. It was [...]
[...] in reach to make both so I chose cordial. I did however go hunting down the road and found loads of berries for dyeing – which you can read about on Historic Crafts. But I would never want to use these berries [...]
[...] reds, greens and browns often occur too. I have personally tried dyeing with Blackberries and Elderberries, both resulting in lovely shades of purple. As do Raspberries, Mulberries, Blueberries, Pokeweed [...]