Dying Almost Killed Me

Well, never let it be said that dying is effortless. Two days of gathering plants, two days of mordanting, four long days of preparing dyes and then actually dying, standing most of the day on these concrete/tile floors ... horrendous on the old knees, but, after almost two weeks of work, the Appalachian Arts natural dying project results are finally in. I tried to get all the colors in one shot, but the photo just doesn't do them justice. If you click on the photo and look at the larger version you get a better idea of the color. We only purchased the indigo for the blues; everything else is local plants. There are still lots of other plants I want to try, but a lot are not ready to gather yet, and I would also like to do overdyes for new colors, so---at a later date, we will try again. This was a great practical chemistry lesson; the kids were very interested in why one plant gave such different results with different mordants. What a great excuse to pull my chemistry background into my art classes (my original degree is science; I taught Chemistry for five years). All in all, this has been a great project. I don't think the kids will forget this one.