I'm very late at posting this. The February project on my Plant Dyes for All Seasons Calendar was bark dyes which was very opportune (obviously planned that way!) as I was just about to prune my olive tree. It had grown rather tall and I wanted to make it a more rounded shape, so the top branches had to go!
Once I'd finished pruning the tree I took a vegetable peeler and carefully peeled off strips of the bark. After cutting them into smaller pieces, I put them in a large jar of water, supposedly for a week! About 3 weeks later I remembered I hadn't done anything with them and boiled them up for at least an hour at a time over several days. The dye liquor turned quite a nice deep colour so I put in some Cotswold locks, not much (maybe a large handful) as I only had a small amount of dye. I weighed out 100g of bark and I wasn't convinced that would dye 100g of fleece, so I used much less.
Tree barks don't need a mordant as they contain a nice amount of tannin, which serves as a natural mordant. So, once the fleece had soaked in the solution for a while, I heated it up and simmered for a couple of hours. It then sat in the dye for 3 or 4 days before I remembered to rescue it!
Here's the result, quite a nice colour I think :-
Not really enough to do much with, but I'll monitor it over the next year to see if the colour is stable, and if so, the poor old olive tree might just have to have another haircut!
Once I'd finished pruning the tree I took a vegetable peeler and carefully peeled off strips of the bark. After cutting them into smaller pieces, I put them in a large jar of water, supposedly for a week! About 3 weeks later I remembered I hadn't done anything with them and boiled them up for at least an hour at a time over several days. The dye liquor turned quite a nice deep colour so I put in some Cotswold locks, not much (maybe a large handful) as I only had a small amount of dye. I weighed out 100g of bark and I wasn't convinced that would dye 100g of fleece, so I used much less.
Tree barks don't need a mordant as they contain a nice amount of tannin, which serves as a natural mordant. So, once the fleece had soaked in the solution for a while, I heated it up and simmered for a couple of hours. It then sat in the dye for 3 or 4 days before I remembered to rescue it!
Here's the result, quite a nice colour I think :-
Not really enough to do much with, but I'll monitor it over the next year to see if the colour is stable, and if so, the poor old olive tree might just have to have another haircut!
