Given how dandelion flowers stain hands, I was interested to see how well they worked as a dye.
I’ve been collecting dandelions for weeks and keeping them in the freezer. When the time came to use them I gently heated them for an hour to extract the colour. I left them to soak over night then squeezed the liquid through a muslin cloth.
The dye liquid was actually a light brown and not at all yellow and I wonder if fresh dandelions would yield more of a yellow. The fabric was mordanted in soya milk and left to cure for a few weeks before dyeing.
This cotton voile scarf is a lovely caramel colour but it was an awful lot of trouble and I’m not sure if I’ll repeat it again as I can produce a similar colour from alder cones which I suspect will be more lightfast due to the tannins in alder cones. It was fun dyeing with dandelions, nevertheless!
