A little more Colorado

As we traveled and camped while on our vacation I collected different plants, wrapped them in my premortanted wool, simmered them in the dye pot for an hour or so, and then left them for a week in zip lock bags. On our way home from the workshop I opened them and rinsed them out in the mountain streams we camped by, I could not believe some of the prints, it was like magic. I saw this technique done on India Flint's blog http://www.prophet-of-bloom.blogspot.com/ I'm not exactly sure how she does it, this is how I did it. Check out her blog, she is definitely a master at natural dying. She has also wrote a book Eco Colour.
This was my first bundle, I picked some sunflowers along the roadside in Nebraska, wrapped them up in wool and tied them lightly with string (the flowers wrapped around them were for photo purposes, then I threw them in the dye water). Simmered them a good hour, then left to set in the bag with some of the water for a week.

I had to do Aspen leaves and bark in Colorado.

And lichen.

This was one of our camp sites, we had tall cliffs on one side of us and a mountain stream in front.

I was in heaven.

At night we had a campfire along the stream, I quilted for hours.

At the next camp I began rinsing out my fabric bundles in the stream along our camp.

This was the sunflowers, they didn't have much color so I put them in the cochineal pot before I unwrapped them and simmered it awhile. Now they have yellow blobs with the red around them.

Before I left home I wrapped up eucalyptus leaves and stems, (I planted them in my garden this summer). I simmered them, then opened them a week later. Oh my goodness they are unbelievable.

The fabric turned a pale yellow, the leaves left different orange, rust, and deep yellow prints. This picture does not show how wonderful it is. When I hot home I did two more each one better.

And here they are hanging to dry at our camp, left to right, lichen over dyed with wild carrot, lichen over dyed with Navajo tea, eucalyptus and sunflowers over dyed with cochineal.

Another river we camped on. Camping in the Rocky Mountains every night is a wonderful experience, we were on different river or mountain lake every night. Of course we never stayed in "commercial" campgrounds, we camped in the wilderness, in "God's Country".

My fabric rinsed out from the dye workshop, left to right sage, Navajo tea and rabbit bush.

Lichen, cliff rose and wild carrot fresh and dried. It amazes me all the color you get out of the desert plants. More than I can get out of my Michigan plants without an after rinse.