It’s time to clear the frozen flowers from last year’s garden out of the freezer. Top left to right: fresh silver dollar flowers, fresh orange rhododendrons, frozen pink and purple hollyhocks. Bottom left to right: frozen purple iris, frozen delphinium flowers, frozen purple petunias.
I used a version of India Flint’s Stuff, Steep and Store method. I think this method has potential for plant material that likely wouldn’t produce good colour in a regular heat immersion bath.
I stuffed the jars full of plant material and a selection of wool and silk fibres and fabrics, put them in a canning pot, filled the pot with water to the jar necks and then heated until the water was just before the boiling point. I then turned off the heat and let the jars cool overnight in the pot.
I take them outside on sunny days to bask in the sun. The fibre and fabric are taking up colour well. The test will be to see if the colour survives washing. If it does I’ll then test for lightfastness.
When the sun goes down it gets cold. So they come inside and get tucked in for the night.