Natural dyeing with pine cones

Recently I discovered by reading Rebecca Desnos' blog, that the cone pines are actually good candidates for natural dyeing. L.C. Cariou also experienced such type of natural dyeing.

Fortunately I have several pines in my garden, so I simply grabed several pine cones, and soak them into water using a stainless steel pot.

I put the pot to the heater for about an hour (not too hot, and I reduced the temperature when I started to see bubbles at the surface of water). After, I let the cones insde the water to cool down over a night. The next morning, I removed the cones and filtered the dying bath.

Without any mordanting, I soaked into the bath several pieces of cellulose based fabrics, in cotton or linen. I wanted to test at first the color on cellulose based fibers, wihtout mordanting, as it was my first time with this dyeing type.

Then I heated again the pot during about an hour, before to let cool down the fibers inside the dyeing bath over a night as well. To finish I rinsed the fabrics, and let them dried on fresh air.

Surprinsigly, the results was quite nice, and it gives a really nice pallette of light pinks depensind on the fabrics types. See by yourself on the pictures!