An Experiment With Yarn and Daylilies

Karen L. brought this article to my attention. It should be of interest to anyone interested in natural dyeing as it uses alcohol to extract the dye. I will paste the entire article here, as these things are sometimes taken down and/or impossible to find later.

From https://www.knittingparadise.com/t-609083-1.html:

May 31, 2019 23:07:09   #

DaylilyDawn

Recently I did an experiment with yarn and my daylilies by taking alcohol and placing some of it in a jar with a lid. Then I took the flower petals off one of my daylilies, Buddy's Black Jack a red flower with a big black eye zone. I place the petals in the jar of alcohol and let it sit overnight. The next morning all of the color in the petals had been extracted by the alcohol and only white plant tissue was left and removed. I repeat that with several flowers over a period of days. The alcohol is going to be used as a dye. The experiment was to take a quarter of a cup of water and put in a small pot.Then I added 2 teaspoons of the alcohol. I soak a few inches of Knit Picks Swish DK weigh yarn in warm water and a splash of vinegar. Once the yarn was saturated, I placed it into the pot with the colored alcohol. I raised the water temperature to boiling and then turned it down to simmer for 10 minutes. Then Turned the heat off. The yarn was left to cool in the water. When the yarn was cooled I removed the yarn and washed it with a drop of dish soap. Then rinsed it very well and let it dry.It had been a rosy lavender. I repeated the dye process and got a deeper color. I also tested some Knit Picks Gloss lace weight in the color Sterling Gray. It turned the gray yarn a very pretty lavender color