Solar Dye

I posted about my solar dyeing experiment many months ago. This silk scarf had been bundled with onion skins and left for six months in a bottle. Using the sun to dye the fabric rather than boiling the fabric on the stove is a long process but I am excited to see the results. I just found the bottle again and now that the weather is warming up I have packed it full of more onion skins. The skins that I had put in the bottle last time had almost disolved into nothing and their colour had transfered to the scarf.  I'm wondering at what point the process will weaken the silk. I might only leave the bottle to the end of summer, which means it will have been in there for over a year.

This dress used the solar dye technique with eucalupyus leaves. The fabric was only left in the bottle for three months, which wasn't enough time for the full colour to transfer across. I was hoping to get the shapes of the leaves to transfer over to the fabric but didn't have the six or so months that it would have required. I may try another lot of fabric this summer.