A little botany: Geranium Robertianum
The name Geranium comes from the Greek geranos which means crane, referring to the shape of its fruits. The one that grows wild at the bottom of my garden is geranium robertianum. It would derive from the name given to this plant in the Middle Ages: herba ruberta, meaning red grass ( ruber) . Then, through successive deformations, it will be named Herbe à Robert. It is a plant that grows easily in stone walls, rather in the shade. It gives off a strong smell that I like when it is crumpled.
I found in the book “Dyeing Wool with Plants” published by Saxe, that it could be used for vegetable dyeing and presto! Here we go for a test!
Dye bath
I planned to use 300g of fresh whole plant for 100g of wool. I roughly cut the plant (the smell of which intoxicates me!) and filled my pot.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Ut elit tellus, luctus nec ullamcorper mattis, pulvinar dapibus leo Boiling water and an hour of decoction at a small “flopflop”, filtration through my “cheesecloth curtain” and here is my operational dye bath!
Dyeing
My wool was soaked then mordanted (see the article “let's go for the first try”) with 10g of Alum and 5g of Cream of Tartar. I checked that my wool was at the same temperature as the dye bath (I added water to have enough water to cover the wool). And let's cook for 1 hour at 85-95°C, stirring gently every 15 minutes. The wool cooled in the dye bath, then rinsed, checking the temperature to avoid thermal shock.
I got a slightly green-beige yellow, quite nice but not exceptional either.
I am not sure if I would start this dye again or with a more pronounced mordant (20g of alum instead of 10g). Unless I carry out a post-etching with iron sulfate? I will explain the method to you later.
I'm still going to harvest the plant and dry it, you never know...
See you soon
CKL
