My local group met today at my house and we did some natural dyeing and eco-printing. Luckily, we had a sunny day and it didn’t get too cold until later in the afternoon.

First we bundled up a bunch of paper with leaves, tied up the packages in cardboard and started steaming the paper.

Then we made a bunch of different dye pots – this one was with onion skins.

This one was walnut dye.

Barberry seeds and leaves went into this pot.

I poured about half a bottle of Turmeric into this pot.

This one has eucalyptus leaves. These aren’t the fresh kind so we weren’t sure what they would do.

And then we had some synthetic indigo.

We soaked the leaves and the silk and wool in vinegar water.

Then we started putting leaves over the fabric. This is a piece of silk that I had started. I added a lot more after this photo.

This one is Louise’s scarf laid out and ready to roll up into a bundle.

Here are the pots all cooking away on their little stoves.

Here’s the indigo pot with some fabric put in and soaking. I’m not sure we followed the directions properly on this but we got blue so I guess that is good enough.

A couple of the cook stoves didn’t work properly so I took a few pots inside and used the stove. This is the Turmeric one cooking.

And the eucalyptus one behind it.

Here’s the only finished items I have to show you. This is wool thread that I put into various pots. The dark blue and light blue are both indigo. The deep reddish-brown is onion skins, the yellowish one is turmeric and the green one is from the barberry. The colors are wonderful and I like them all. I’ll show you some more fabric and the eco-prints once they are done. The eco-prints need to sit for another couple of weeks so we’ll have to wait to see how they came out. Remember, patience is a virtue.