A few weeks ago I was lucky enough to be given some green walnuts.
I had never used walnuts for dyeing before. It was a bit of a puzzle to me as to what part of the walnuts I should use for dyeing. Should I use them whole or chop them up.? I checked in Jenny Deans book Wild Colour and realised I should use the whole green walnut . So I just randomly chopped the green casing away from the walnuts shell and placed the chopped up mixture in the dye pot. I did not remove the nuts.
After a short time of simmering the solution was a delicious brown colour.
I kept it simple and only dyed wool fibres, silk thread and a small piece of silk fabric. The wool fibre , which was Wensleydale long wool , had been mordanted with Alum.
The wool dyed brilliantly with the walnuts the silks far less so. I wonder if this is down to the mordanting?
Interesting
I have saved some of the walnut dye liquor. I will try dyeing with walnuts again with some mordanted silk and some mordanted cotton. I am not going to eat the walnuts that I dyed with , they looked very mouldy after removal from the dye liquor. I put them on the compost heap.
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Els
24 Sep 2017(uhhhhm … how were your fingers after chopping up the nuts ??? I KNOW they dye fingers too ha, ha, ha !)
Have a good week Jane !
jane_mercer
28 Sep 2017I used my trusty marigolds ( rubber gloves) so my fingers were fine thanks. We are now relaxing on holiday so having a very good week
jean betts
25 Sep 2017you don’t have to waste the edible nuts, remove the outer green soft shell and use that for the dye – then enjoy the nuts.
jane_mercer
28 Sep 2017Why did I not think of that