Natural Dye with Black Hollyhocks

I planted this beautiful dark colored Hollyhock a couple years ago Since it is a biennial variety it spent last year focusing on roots and leaves, and now in it’s second year it put out some stunning flowers. It also grew to be over 8 ft tall!

I saw that a friend, who is a very skilled natural dyer and multi disciplined artist named Kira referenced using black hollyhock flowers to dye some of her bandanas she sells. I immediately looked into it more and sure enough discovered you can harvest the fallen flowers from the ground to dry and create a blueish dye.

After I gathered a decent amount I decided to do some more research to hopefully end with a better result than most of my other natural dye projects. That means I actually wanted to try all the steps like scouring (pre-washing) the fabric and using a mordant.

To scour the linen shirt I wanted to use I first made some wash soda by putting baking soda in the oven at 200 degrees for 1 hour. Then I added about 2 tablespoons to a gallon stock pot of boiling water. I then allowed the shirt to boil and simmer in the water for around 3 hours. At some point I also added a few drops of dish soap. My cabin got incredibly steamy during this time and I was wishing I had a hot plate to have done this outside.

Why scour? It helps to remove all the excess oils and dirt that may be present in the fabric before mordanting and dyeing. If the oils and dirt are on the fabric it can lead to spots of discoloration and uneven dye. (to be honest I once again probably could have gotten away without this step because I wasn’t going for an even coloring anyways, but it didn’t hurt to try!)

After I scoured and rinsed the shirt I was working with I mordanted with Alum. Once again I filled a stock pot with about a gallon and a half of water and brought it to a simmer. Than I scooped some out in a measuring cup and mixed with about 2 tablespoons of alum with a dash of cream of tarter and salt until it dissolved than poured the mixture back into the simmering water. After that I added the already we fabric that I had just scoured to simmer again for a few hours .

Why use wet fabric? When the fibers in the garment are wet it aids in absorption and the dyes to penetrate into the fibers better.

While I was simmering the linen shirt for the second time in one day in the stock pot I decided to count out 100 hollyhock flowers and put them in a gallon pot with water and do a cold soak. Why 100? Because it felt like a good amount and I had a surprising amount of flowers to utilize. I wanted to try a cold soak because I didn’t want to use the stove anymore and after even a few minutes I could see the color from the flowers leaching into the water! Once I was ready to remove the mordanted fabric I rinsed it fairly well and then dunked it in the room temperature dye pot. I left it in there over night.

The next morning I removed the shirt from the dye bath and rinsed it. I wasn’t satisfied with the intensity of the color and wanted to keep playing so I decided to try rolling some of the flowers up in the shirt to produce “polka dot” like effect. I laid an old towel down and then simply took the flowers back ( also added some dyers coreopsis flowers )out of the dye pot and laid them out on the wet shirt than found a stick and rolled the shirt up and left it like that for 5 hours. This is a picture of the shirt after all of that. Its not fabulous but I had a lot of fun making it! I may end up throwing it back in the dye pot to get an even deeper color at some point and may keep you updated.I would love to hear about your dye projects and if you have tips or tricks you’d like to share!