Natural Dying with Pokeberries

Hello again, it’s been a while since my last post so I thought I would let you all know that I am still here and still without a computer. However, do to the generosity of a dear friend who just so happened to have a spare computer lying around the house for us to borrow, I can post about my recent dying fun with pictures!
I decided to venture out into the woods recently in search of Pokeberries and found just enough to work with.

I decided to use these berries fresh instead of drying them just to see what would happen. I also wanted to experiment with different mordents to see if I could get different colors using the same dye stuffs.
For the first batch I used Alum with Cream of Tartar for the mordents and for the second I used only white vinegar.
To prepare the berries I carefully removed them from the stems and placed them in a large dye pot, I used about 1 cup of berries for the first batch, with about 12 cups of water. I brought the dye pot to a boil then reduced the heat to a simmer for about an hour. I then crushed the berries with a potato masher and simmered for another hour. I turned off the dye pot and let it cool so I could strain out the crushed parts and seeds. Once strained, I reheated the dye, added the mordents, and then for the first batch added about 3 oz. of pre-soaked silk/merino blend top. I then brought the pot back up to a boil for 1 hour. I noticed with this first batch that the longer it boiled the lighter the color was getting.

After an hour I turned off the pot and let it soak in the pot overnight so it would cool on its own to room temperature. The next morning I drained and discarded the dye stuff off the fiber, rinsed it and hung it outside to dry. I found that in the rinse most of the dye washed out and I was left with a flesh color, this is a beautiful color in the silk but it wasn’t the color I was hoping for so I started preparing the second bath.

I changed the procedure slightly for the second batch in the following way; I used about 2 cups of berries instead of 1 to the same amount of water and used white vinegar as my mordent. Also, when I added the fiber, (same kind), I didn’t pre-soak it and I didn’t bring the bath up to a boil, I just kept it hot enough to produce a little steam. This time the deep wine color I saw in the first batch didn’t lighten up over time but stayed the same. When I rinsed it out the next day, I kept the dye bath to re-use, very little color washed out of the fiber and the merino wound up taking the beautiful wine color while the silk took the flesh color as in the first batch, so it is streaked. I liked the look so much I decided to dye another batch, expecting a lighter color but to my surprise I achieved the very same results so I saved the dye bath again, in mason jars, for future dying.

This photo below shows the two results side by side, the one the left is the first batch and the one on the right is the second.