International Fungi & Fibre Newsletter 2019
I had 140 g dried mushrooms in the dyepot.
From left : dyebath 1-2-3-4 No mordant. Temperature 62-63 degrees C.
From left : dyebath 5-6-7-8 Tin mordant.
Dyebath 9 tin mordant with a little iron added( gave a little darker colour than dyebath 9)
I think it is nice with the purples, but I have not done any lightfastness tests yet. And it takes a lot of mushrooms. All dyed with fresh Tapinella atrotomentosus
From left : 1 and 2 no mordant 65C 50 min. 3 and 4 no mordant 95C.
I had the temperature at 65C for 35 minutes and the yarn had a really dark purple. Left it for coffee and when I returned the dyebath was boiling, and the yarn had turned dark brown ( ! hm ) The last skein yarn ( tin mordant ) got a nice pale green colour.
This was my first try with tapinella on yarn without mordant. Has anyone
succeeded to achieve purple with dried tapinellas?
Greetings, Jytte
News of the Danish dyeing group by Jytte Albertsen, Denmark
In December 2016 and January 2017 some in the group were experimenting with varying the concentration of mordants. We tried 4 different mordants : alum, tin, iron and copper. We did all the mordanting at room temperature for 24hours, and at 85C for 45 minutes. Starting with 10% and then going down to 0.5% ( except tin that started at 2% and came down to 0.5% ). The dyeing was done with Phaeolus schweinitzii in separate glass jars for each of the 10g yarn. The dyeing was done at 85C. I can send more details from the experiments if someone is interested, and I will bring the dyed yarn to Norway. It it difficult to explain the difference in colours in writing, better to see it and have it in your hands! In April 2017 we had a workshop on the mushroom dyeing of cotton. Sagarika Devi from India was the instructor of the workshop and we learned a lot. There were 16 people in the workshop and we dyed different kinds of cotton with 2 different mushrooms : Cortinarius semisanguineus and Phaeolus schweinitzii.
Thank you, Sagarika, it was great to have you living in Denmark, and have you take part in the Danish activities.
In May 2017 we had a workshop in papermaking of polypores. Liza Johannson came down from Sweden, and we had some great days with her in Denmark. We had been collecting polypores all winter and dryed them so we had a lot. We gathered in Hornbæk in North Sealand and about 25 people participated. At the end of the day we all had some very nice paper in different colours to take home. Thank you Liza. It was a great day.
In September 2017 the mushroom society had an exhibition in Rådvad, and the dyeing group demonstrated dyeing and papermaking and showed some of our mushroom dyed creations.
I hope to see all of you in Norway in August 2018!