EUCALYPTUS RESULTS

Eucalyptus is indeed bizarre! 

To resolve my earlier post, here are the results.  

I left the leaves from the arroyo tied up in the soy fabric, fermenting away for about ten days.  Not much was happening.  So...I re-read what India had to say about Eucalyptus in her book,  Eco-Colour: Botanical Dyes for Beautiful Textiles.  I needed heat! 

Much to the grief of my family, I steamed three bundles of fabric and leaves for about four hours last night.  The whole house smelled of eucalyptus.  It was kind of nice for the first half hour, then it became quite nauseating.  But, I did get some great color!  So it was worth it.

Here is the soy-mordanted long leafed eucalyptus.  It's a beautiful light brick-red:

And here is the round leaves I picked from a tree in the arroyo.  They are the same color as Eucalyptus, and they smell like Eucalyptus.  But, I must admit, I'm not sure what they were.  They were wrapped in the soy fabric for about ten days, also, then steamed.   They produced a more greenish-brownish, khaki fabric:

I froze the remaining leaves.  Freezing is supposed to burst the cells, making it easier for the dye to be released...in theory, anyway.  Here are the results.  This is previously frozen Eucalyptus leaves (from the same tree as the first fabric above) that were wrapped in soy fabric and steamed with the above two samples.  This one has the same light brick-red, but also has some pinker parts than the first sample.  

 Here are some interesting results from the buds from the Eucalyptus tree.  They are little triangular pointed things, that eventually sprout a red-spiked flower.  A few of them were starting to show color, but most were still just buds.  I just took the scissors to them and cut them into little round flat rings and spread them out onto fabric, rolled them up and left them for several days in hot water.  This produced some very lovely yellow, gold and brown circles, almost like cigarette burns:

With some more of the frozen leaves, I cut them up and spread them over alum-mordanted fabric, rolled them up, tied the roll and left it at room temperature for several days.  There was a little color coming.  Yellow!  

I wasn't really pleased with the results, so I spread the chopped leaves back out evenly, rolled it back up and steamed it for several hours.  Yes, in the house again.

I had had a few leaves left over from the above project, so I chopped them up and put them with some soy-fabric and water in a mason jar and microwaved them for thirty seconds every couple of minutes for an hour or two.  The fabric came out a solid yellow:

Strange, huh?  The whole leaves made reddish pink to orange, and the chopped up leaves made yellows and golds.  Mordant didn't seem to matter, or heat, for that matter.