something other than red

Admittedly, i have had some ‘fails” with the madder pot, resulting in a plethora of bad browns, pallid oranges and wth-is-thats 🙂 (Old mold, fridge scum, baby puke, baby shit, dog puke, dog….well, you get the picture.) Part of my problem is that i hesitate to throw away the dye bath, even when the colour left is a ghosty sad mud, with obviously not a lot of actual dyestuff left. Mordants and modifiers can only do so much magic too before it’s pointless with the colour left, and a person can have only so many decanted baths stored that more than likely will not be used again!

Madder is substantive though, which means most of the colour bonds hard with the fabric, (and requires no mordant really) which also means that even though i’m using the weaker resulting fabrics, any overdye has to be a rather heavy WOF.  I don’t need any more oranges, so rather than going with an easy dye like osage, i went with an easy dye like logwood, HA, with a post mordant/modifier dip of iron for lightfastness.

WONDERFUL purples and mottlings!

These may not be “suitable” for the project garment, even though they are part madder, but as narrow splash splices, i might get away with a teeny bit of it.