Daffodil Dye
- ruralweaver
- Mar 31, 2025
- 2 min read
OK after weeks of collecting daffodils from our place I was ready to do some dyeing.
Let me begin by saying that you will find as I go along this is just my experience and first time with these flowers. Others online can provide you with more exact instructions concerning weights and temperatures should you want to try. You can see below it's hard to get precise with “warm” and “cook” settings.
I start the wool yarn in a mordant bath while I go to the field to gather some of the last of the daffodils. I added a tablespoon of the alum (found in grocery store spice section) to a cup of boiling water in the pot. Filled the pot with water and added wool yarn, cotton thread and wool felt. Boiled for an hour and left it all in the pot until next day.
Using the same pot I removed the yarn etc. and filled the 8 quart pot with mostly dried and some fresh flowers. I am using the cook setting and that will bring liquids to a soft boil. I set the timer for 1 hour. And let it sit for another 10 hours.
Strained the batch and boiled textiles for an hour and let them set in the pot for another 9 hours.
Usually around here there is no humidity but it's raining and that's a good thing, so by the woodstove it went.
Now the results! The cotton thread is a pretty yellow but not all of it has color. I think it was floating on top, I should have maybe had it under the felt to hold it down. The wool yarn and wool felt are a darker almost a “golden honey” color. Not expecting any sort of result so I'm happy and will use all in some sort of project.
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