Three adults, two kids, a bag of rusty things: Eco Dyeing Again

My city recently had a Category 2 tropical cyclone pass through. Though it's been a couple of weeks since then, there were so many trees down that they are still cleaning them up. This poor gum tree still had enough roots in the ground for its leaves to be green, but it is still going to be cleared away.

I went for a little drive around with my cutters and grabbed some leaves for dyeing over Easter weekend: two kinds of gum and grevillea.

Out at a friend's place we dipped and wrapped for a couple of hours, pretty much every bit of fabric, shirt and cotton lace that I had taken.

The pots went very black when we boiled them. Always interesting to see what colour comes out the strongest. This pot had gum leaves in it:

This pot had none. But both had rusty things and vinegar. Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble indeed.

We wrapped so many things that we had to do two lots: that's four pots full in total.

Coffee while we wait? Why not.

The first batch had some spectacular colours when we hung them up wet.

The silk always takes up colours particularly well, like this shirt. It does seem to speckle the tea though, rather than soak up full patches of colour.

Interesting speckling on this fabric.

This pillowcase showed a lot of promise.

Once dried

This shirt didn't print any of the leaves that I wrapped in it, but it's interesting nonetheless.

And the lace at the top took up the tea leaves' copper colour for a nice contrast.

This silk shirt was magnificent: silk body and cotton sleeves that took up different colours. The green comes from onion skins. My friend wrapped this one up.

Even op shop doilies deserve a second chance in life. I think this one will make a nice patch on something.

First time dyeing cotton lace. Also looking forward to adding this to some clothes.

I found a whole box of these little bags. I was hoping that they were cotton and would take up the dye: turns out they are! They'll be nice little bags to put my jewellery in.

Lots of random scraps of fabric for patches.

And I was right: the sloth pillowcase was one of my favourite dye jobs of the day. Rather than being on a white background he is now firmly ensconced in the jungle.

Next favourite: this lace. Wish I had had more to dye!

Anther random piece of fabric.

But it has some great leaf prints.

Plain white skirt to eco dyed magic! Again, the green is from onion skins.

Lots of clear grevillea leaf prints here.

This was a white men's shirt. Strangely, there was a large section of rusty fence in the middle of this shirt that hasn't printed at all! Interesting effect though. Perhaps it needs a lino print in the middle?