Sunflower - Adventures in Natural Dyeing

 I thought I'd look into sunflower as a dye, because of all the Black Hopi Sunflower posts I was seeing under the natural dye hashtag I follow on Insta.

I happened to have some sunflowers, which weren't Hopi but were part of a small bouquet I'd bought from Stem by Stem Folkestone. I don't like waste, so instead of composting them I thought I would see if dye extraction was possible. 

Petals:

At first I tried the petals of the 2 sunflower heads, which didn't seem promising as they have a slightly waxy, water resistant finish. However I simmered them with 3 tablespoons of white vinegar and 10g 75% merino 25% nylon sock yarn in a pan of filtered water for just under an hour and left them to cool. The dye colour looked really pale in the pot, and the petals still seemed quite bright and full of colour when I removed them, so I wasn't expecting a great result.

I was pleasantly surprised when they yielded a soft yellow colour which would be acceptable as a pastel. I don't know how light fast the colour will be, so I may update this blog in a month or so once the colour has had a chance to settle in. The yarn below was dyed around 1st October, so i'll post again at the end of the month with another photo.

Seeds:

I used the seed heads of the 2 sunflowers, torn into chunks with the green leaves around the edge and the body of the stalk taken off, in filtered water with a tablespoon of vinegar. 10g of 75% merino/25% nylon yarn was in the pot. At first this produced a mid brown colour, so in the last 15 minutes (after removing a small strand of the light brown) I added a tablespoon of homemade iron mordant, and this darkened the colour dramatically. It ended up as a dark brown colour with slightly olive undertones which I was really happy with, although it would take a lot of sunflowers to produce a reasonable amount of this colour on a yarn. 

Conclusion:

Surprisingly, the two colours represent almost perfectly the original tones of the flower itself. However, don't hold your breath for sunflower dyed skeins to be stocked at www.folkestoneharbouryarn.com as it takes a heck of a lot of plant to colour 10g. However I may try to grow Hopi sunflowers in the dye garden next year, so you'll have to wait and see what colours those produce.