turmeric on silk

Happy New Year to 2016
It's been quite a year of transitions, for me. Settling into my new job; making new relationships; getting out and spending more time with people; camping and travelling more; being ill; getting the trees cut back out the front of my garden. 
We had the horrendous floods in Yorkshire over Xmas; though I haven't been personally affected, we were at risk over the xmas weekend. I can only imagine the dreadful conditions people are currently coping with.


I've had some more personal transitions too; it wasn't only the trees that got cut back this year. 
A number of my friends have had a crap year; and so I'm glad to see them through all that. So I'm welcoming 2016; I hope you have a peaceful and love-filled year. I will try my best to! 

The opened bundle. Silk with the turmeric dried on it. I've left it to dry, and settle a while; then I'll iron it, and see if that fixes it. I've not used a mordant at all; it's an experiment. See what happens. I do like the marks made by the binding though; I hope the silk retains that. It may need some overdying at some point though? Have to wait and see. 

 The dried turmeric on the silk, before I opened the bundle.

Letting the silk soak in the turmeric; it's in a cup, so it's only a small bundle of cloth.

The cup with the turmeric mixed in water; I left part of the fabric out of the mixture, to see if I could get a graded colour......because it's yellow, it hasn't got as much contrast as I'd like.

leaves dipped in iron water

 The whole piece of silk

The Bundle; steaming

I dipped the leaves (fig leaves, and a plant I can't identify) into iron water for a couple of days, and left them there.

Wrapped them into a bundle of silk cloth; no mordant; an aluminium steamer. It's never cleaned in between dyepots, so has remnants of all sorts of plant dye in it.

I left it for a couple of days, after steaming it. Then unwrapped; and I think it's come out rather well! Am leaving it to settle for a bit; then I will iron it to fix it, which will flatten the fabric.

I'm rather happy with the results.