In the pink ....or so to speak

I cant sit still in front of the tv - so beware the bag of frozen raspberries in the fridge.  Never mind that its a cold night.

  

Yep, cold fingers but each little raspberry is now  tightly tied into some mordanted white cotton.

Cant leave the poor things cold so on with some lukewarm water.

They look so pretty that after a while I just had to give them a little squeeze.  And you've guessed, it was more than that, I was actually scared that no dye was going to come out of them.

But then overnight

Of course this is wet fabric so the colour is much richer and darker than when dry.

There was still some really pretty colour left in the water - so more fabric needed to exhaust the water - in goes  a scrap of silk 

Good enough to eat, or drink, except for the fact that its had fabric sitting in it and who knows what it might have been in contact with before  it got into my hands.  And that pretty bowl its sitting in, well its an op shop find with a big chip so its never, ever, used for food.

Notice the colour change as its dried.  Interesting too, the silk has photographed pretty acurately but the cotton appears darker than it really is.  Fascinating, as I untied the raspberries, nearly all the colour had come out of the skin and flesh leaving the remnants of skin and seeds a creamy sort of colour.  

Only time will tell us how permanent the colour is - thats part of the mystery of plant dyes. I'll start a date and sample file so that I check next year, and the year after, and.....

So those of you coming to my workshop this weekend, take pity on raspberries and be prepared - you might get cold fingers for a few minutes!

p.s. who would have thought I could start to get nerdy over a few raspberries