Acorn-y pun
Can these mountain of local nuts do much in the dye pot?
TL;DR: For dyeing with acorns, pre-mordant with iron (6% WOF) gives a dark chocolate brown, iron dip after a dye with no mordant led to shades of grey.
Feel free to turn this image into a puzzle for someone you hate.
I was curious to see if there was much dye potential in the piles of acorns I see in my neighbourhood every fall. I collected several pounds of these last September, dried them and had them ready to dye.
Step 1: Weigh everything
I decided to start with a test run. I used about 4 level cups of dried acorns which came out to 511 grams.
Step 2: Make a rough plan with wool and mordants
I wanted to try a couple of different experiments in the pot and went with four skeins of wool:
Skein with no mordant (acorns are high in tannins and thus should not require a mordant).
Skein mordanted with alum (to see if that does make a difference).
Skein with no mordant, I’ll be dipping into iron after the dye to see what happens.
Skein pre-mordanted with iron (6% WOF). This skein is visible on the bottom of the shot as starting out a tan colour.
All together, the four skeins weigh 38 grams (1300% WOF).
Sack time
As usual, I first scooped out roughly half the acorns to make room in the dye vat. Then I placed all the pre-soaked fiber into a mesh paint bag (available at most paint stores, this was a 1-gallon size). Once the bag was in, I covered it in some of the remaining acorns to help weigh it down. I then proceeded to let it simmer for about one hour.
Iron pre-mordanted wool
The wool pre-mordanted with iron turned a dark chocolate brown within about 15 minutes into simmering. It’s a lovely dark shade.
The rest
The other three skeins (both no mordant and alum pre-mordanted wool) came out a pale tan colour. The usual colour of a “dud” dyeing material. It wasn’t that useful of a colour to me for upcoming projects so I switched gears and decided to try to do post-dye dips into an iron sulphate solution (roughly 15% WOF) at three different time lengths: 1 minute, 10 minute and 45 minutes. See results below.
Post-iron dips gave shades of grey
From left to right: First three skeins were simmered in the pot for an hour and left to cool for about two hours. Then they were dipped into a bath with iron sulphate (15% WOF):
Skein 1: post-dye dip in iron for 45 minutes
Skein 2: post-dye dip in iron for 5 minutes
Skein 3: post-dye dip in iron for 1 minute
Skein 4: pre-mordanted with iron, simmered in dye pot for 1 hour, no post-dye dip.
Ultimately I was really happy with the shades, all achievable by introducing the wool to iron at different stages and different lengths of time.
