I’m always curious about the naturally dyed fabrics I see online, but I’m not really interested in becoming a dyer. I am up for a little experimenting, though. One day last week I was picking up two fallen, spent gloxinia blossoms and thought wouldn’t these make a pretty fabric color? Why not see? So I boiled some water and put the blooms in and mashed them around and poured it into a jar with a bit of muslin. The color I saw was not much and definitely not purple, so I pulled out the cloth and added some alum because I remember reading a long time ago that alum will help set the color. The water turned a bright magenta color! I put the muslin back in, put the lid on the jar, and set it in the sun.

Two days later I pulled out the muslin. All the magenta stayed in the water. The muslin had turned a pretty pale green, however (the original ‘not much’ color).

It’s very hard to capture the color in a photograph!

I can’t really tell in the top photo. It’s definitely more distinct than the middle photo, but not as dark as the bottom photo.

I like stitching on the muslin and I have plenty of it (It was the base layer for a couch my cats shredded most of the top layer of.), but I’d like more color. I need more solid colors in general. I want to try coloring more strips of the muslin. My husband suggested turmeric next, and blueberries–since they both stain dish towels and tablecloths well. I also want to try avocado. The muslin strips are just the right size for my jar. The only big piece of fabric I plan on doing is in indigo for my robe. I’ve been putting that of since I started it years ago, which is how I know I don’t really want to do any serious dying.