As we left it last time.
Later last night.
I poured the liquid into a jar - it looked quite a strong colour.
This morning - ready to unwrap. Colour looking good.
Unfortunately the dark colour was where the leaves were showing through the loose weave of the fabric and when it was unrolled the fabric was just a peachy pink colour with a few darker smudges of slightly stronger colour.
The boiled leaves - soft and pale now.
Fabric - not very interesting!
The banana one is on the left, the leaf one on the right. Both very similar because they were boiled at the same time in the same water.
The banana bits were surprisingly in tact after two hours of boiling!
The string that tied the bundles has taken the colour better than the muslin.
And this is the fabric, rinsed and dried and concertinered to show variations in colour.
What have I learnt from this experiment? I would like to try again but next time I will steam the fabric rather than boiling it. I think most of the natural plant dye was lost in the liquid. It would probably be wise to keep the different plant material separate - although that might not be quite so necessary if I steam them.
What am I going to do with two lengths of fabric which at the moment look similar to old rags stained with some smudgy red shoe polish? I might stitch them and turn them into book covers. I might over-dye them with another colour. I'm not sure yet. It might be a while though because I really should be sorting out and packing ready to move but I needed an arty interlude.
Thank you very much for joining me.
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