Finally got around to making them up I’d had them cut out for a while, and not done anything with them, but a recent thread on natural dyes on a forum I’m on prompted me to sew them up

The cream one is the natural unbleached cotton, the coffee coloured one is Henna, the yellow one is Turmeric and the purple is Alkanet. I’m pleased with how they turned out.

I also made an apricot fabric I wasn’t going to include in the set because I’d used the whole seeds when dying the fabric, and where they touched the fabric, it stained it darker… but then I thought this set wouldn’t be complete without it, so I made it up. So we now have:

Unfortunately the Turmeric is not lightfast, and washes out. A shame, since it’s a beautiful colour and so easy to dye with! I’m not actually sure how quickly it fades (though I know that less than an hour in strong sunlight fades it to almost white), but I imagine not many washes. My testers did 10 washes before sending back the swatches and they show the same fading you get from sunlight:

The faded and non-faded fabric

So handwashing would be best. But, to get it back yellow again you just need to simmer it in some water and turmeric, so it’s easy to dye it again to keep it the yellow colour. So it fades down to a sort of yellowed version of the coffee coloured one… Still, I think it’s pretty and I’d be willing to keep re-dying it to keep it that colour. In the 10 washes on the Henna and Alkanet ones, there was virtually no fading. The Annato one does fade more than the other two, but less than the Turmeric.

So, they are on offer at CPS right now if anyone wants them I’ll be making more up singularly, so you can choose your colours (though I expect the purple will be most popular haha). I’ve also got Indigo that I keep meaning to play with, but I want to use the more natural fermentation method rather than the chemical version, and it’s more complicated, and I haven’t had the time to do it.