Journal

Dyeing with bloody dock (Rumex sanguineus)

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So I filled a pan with rain water, added the leaves and then brought the pan up to hand hot and held it there until all the leaves lost their colour and went slimey (it is a sorrel so cooks down quickly).

The water was deep pink - a purple toned pink like brambles rather than a yellow toned pink like birch bark. I tossed in a skein of cotton thread that had been mordanted in alum acetate and left it overnight to steep.

Next morning, draining the liquid through a colander out plopped the cotton thread - the colour of a purple Chewit sweet.

Exciting.

Excited indeed I added in some skeins of wool - mordanted with alum . . . they went grey. A fairly dull grey, possibly with a purple tinge, but really not so you would notice. Rinsed in iron they changed to a nice soft greyish green. No purple.

I added in the rest of my mordanted cotton threads - within ten minutes they were the chewitt purple - added in some wool . . . grey.

A skein of double knitting cotton - purple.

Exciting.

It was a little like an exceedingly dull magic trick - and I’m still not sure what to make of it. Obviously it isn’t unusual to get different shades on different materials - but I have never had such a complete change.

I am currently scouring some fabric to see what happens to that.

The other question is how lightfast will the purple be? It has a hint of bramble or elderberry to the colour - neither of which has much staying power, so perhaps it will be fugitive. I shall wind a card with some thread and pop it on a sunny window for a while.

I will report back - and in the meantime here is a PDF with the instructions of how to dye cotton with Rumex sanguineus. You can download it by clicking the "Download attached file' button right at the end of the post

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