Whispering Color: color as change

9- Yellow Earth

Pomegranate is one of my favorite dyes. For yellow. It is one of those dyes that is rich in tannin , like oak and walnut. I planted a few small trees a season ago, but still no fruit. But we eat them a lot anyway so the skins are always used for dye. As the cool weather arrives, so does the pomegranate season here, the first ones coming from California. Right around now. Usually I wait for the wood-stove to crank up but I thought I would do a quick pot on my new burner.

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Pomegranate over commercial dyed cloth. To change the color.

Above, the color is changing. Deepening, Earthening.

I have been using pomegranate for dye and over-dye for a while now. Here is one of my older posts, and you can use the search bar on my blog to find others. Just for some history and examples. I am thinking now, how ochre is a base color in painting. How it might be a warm earth base for over-dyeing in cloth as well. An under-layer instead of an over layer. A base dye liquid to have one color gradually move into another in a bigger way than just yellow. I will keep going.

So really, just water and peels, soaked for a while, brought to a boil will give you yellow. My recipe for saddening involves the copper pot, tea, and then letting it sit, heat up, cool down, never straining, adding more peels, water, even the tin can darkens it. Some of the purple marks on the strips were just some morning glory blossoms caught in the roll-up around the can. This is quick. I unrolled these in an hour or so. Leave it longer. Darker. But the tin can can get really blackening. A new can now and then is good. After a while it rusts. But I don't like rust much. Stiffens the cloth.

I over-dipped a few things here. Considering them as a start, not a finish. A yellow earth base. I am thinking of color more as change now. One thing into another. Starting with earth yellow and working from there.

10 - My spectrum plan

So here is what came of the pomegranate pot yesterday.. Dyeing and mixing with earth yellow.

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The dye primaries, each could be a base, each could be an over-dye

The Neutrals, each can modify the colors. The walnut can also be a base.

2 parts soy milk, 1 part water. A booster.

So by dyeing and over-dyeing what I have with a limited number of materials. All available here. I can get any colors I want, a complete personal spectrum for my work.

And like water color painting, coloring mixing on cloth for me is clearly more about layers. How you see one thing through another.

I have saved and numbered this photo . For reference. # 15 is the tin can blackened version of # 14, which was the pom dipped commercial dyed orange linen I showed yesterday. # 19 was done by dipping # 6 in the indigo vat. #18 is straight red onions skins printed on # 10. # 20 was onion skins printed over #6. #16, red onion skins printed over a dip in the pomegranate/ red onion skin bath that dyed # 13, but it was cotton instead of linen. Quite a mix and match possibility here. I will elaborate on the eco over print ideas next.

I also have not included here, the colors I might have ended up with had I started with white. That expands it more, right?

Another quick commercial dyed strip test. wrapped around a can. I included white this time. I put some new pom skins in this morning, it's quite yellow again.

So in review....

The colors are nice, a range, the methods provide an infinite number of possibilities from what I have...but the system of it helps me make some order out of it. Still never knowing exactly what I will get, but having an idea how to get the full spectrum. This is useful to me, to have an idea, a sense of order about what is happening.

I ask myself, will it make a difference in which order I apply the layers? I think this is it then. How I might build a palette. Of course I can add other dyes and plant materials. Maybe not. But I think I have my head around the methods I might choose to build a personal spectrum. .

I want to start thinking about what I really need to dye. How will I use these colors . What if I stitch up some samplers?

12- Eco overprint

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So the question was, what if I could apply the eco-print idea as an over dye. As a color changer. To make it useful to me. The answer is, I can. Below you can see the scrap after wash and dry. It is more orange of course, because the red over print has combined with the original color. They mixed. One seen through another. Success.

I soaked the scrap in soy milk mordant first. To guarantee a more intense color, because it was cotton. I am sure I can get a range of colors here, depending on what color and also fiber I start with. Maybe leaving it to set longer, maybe doing it more than once. With and without a protein soak. La la la.

17 - Coloring components

To revisit many things...

I fist began over-dyeing in Magic Diaries....

But now, with a focus on spectrum, revisiting the reasons....

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Resist dyeing can be a great way to pattern cloth, personalize motifs to use as personal symbols in your work. It is just a simple concept but by trying over and over, it morphs into something with your own touch. I included here, a little dyeing I did to develop a butterfly when I was focused on Wings at Spirit Cloth Dairies. Some of you might remember. Some of you were not there.