# Mohair Fleece to yarn, natural dye process pics...Yay!



## romysbaskets (Aug 29, 2009)

First I was able to buy a gorgeous Mohair fleece from Averagejo...Thanks again so much for enabling me!:nanner:

The fleece needed very little picking but I went through every bit to make sure it was done well. I loved the feel of this on my fingers. There were four colors so I separated those locks. Then I got to thinking about how many of you dye your rovings... I got excited after I was looking at four garbage bags full of Mohair! I took the creme color and made natural dyes after a little research online. It occurred to me, why take the time to buy the dyes...I wanted to do it now...yes right now! I love experimenting so this is the process: 

First you soak your fleece or roving or yarn in cold or room temp salt water for berry dyes or vinegar and water for plant dyes bring to a simmer for one hour. This type of soak and simmer solution is called the fixative or mordant. Use the ratio of 4 parts water to 1 part salt for berries or 1 part vinegar for plant dyes. 

Make your dye while your fleece is simmering in your mordant, gentle pushing down but no stirring during this. I made a strawberry dye and a blueberry dye, that is what I had in my freezer. So the fleece was added to cold or room temp salt water (4 parts water to one part salt) and then you bring it to a simmer for an hour. While you are soaking the fleece you start the dyes. You simmer the berries in a separate pot for an hour, then strain out the fruit, keep the liquid dye hot. You add the hot fleece to the hot dye try to match the temps and then take off the stove, leave set overnight. 

As this is in my testing phase, I did use small amounts of fleece. 

I also made a coffee and tea set of dyes. Instead of salt water, you use a vinegar water solution same ratio. Then you add the hot fleece to the hot dye you made with brewing strong hot coffee and strong hot tea (I used gun metal green tea and a stove top expresso maker for the coffee). 

Here are the pics!

First, the locks of Mohair looked like this:









The picked and pulled apart fleece looks like Roving:









Fleece in the berry dyes, which I am looking for pink and purplish or blue..not too picky:

















Fleece in coffee and tea dyes, looking for a shade of brown and light green. 

















When I take them out of the pots, I will dry them on a screen. Then I will post the pics of the results. 

Washing the fleece after dye process: use wool soap to wash then rinse til clear. Place on screen to dry. 

After making the berry dyes, I wanted the blueberry dye darker, so I added whole blueberries to my fleece while simmering above. I will gently move them around to hopefully darken my dye.


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## romysbaskets (Aug 29, 2009)

Here are the four wet fleece portions once dyed. The dye process resulted in two happy colors and two I have reservations on. 

I love the coffee and blueberry colors, the pink and tea dyed portions of fleece are debatable. I will have to see what these look like dry.


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## romysbaskets (Aug 29, 2009)

While I was dyeing the fleece bunches, I spun yarn with the creme color Mohair fleece. I finished three skeins of about 115 feet each.


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## romysbaskets (Aug 29, 2009)

I am coming around on the light pink, added more blueberries to get a darker purple for the next batch and started a cranberry batch. So far, coffee is my favorite! Who would have known? The color is drying and coming out beautifully. The lavender is my second favorite but I think the Cranberry will be the big surprise.  While they simmer...I am back to spinning. We have a foot and a half of snow with 4 to 6 more inches expected. It was snowing a bit ago when I walked the dogs but it has subsided for now.

This reminds me of Easter colors! I dumped the pink strawberry dye to make cranberry. Oh well, I will make more later.  I am now very happy with it!


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## Jacki (May 13, 2002)

Take a look at what black beans do, I was really impressed.

Jacki


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## romysbaskets (Aug 29, 2009)

Jacki said:


> Take a look at what black beans do, I was really impressed.
> 
> Jacki


Thanks Jacki! I will be happy to try them after we get some more. Do you use the dry black beans? I was reading about Nettles for green which is plentiful in WA but I am out in Colorado, figured I would plant some here early Spring. 

Here is what Cranberry came out like:


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## Jacki (May 13, 2002)

I found two groups on Ravelry that have me wanting to get my studio up and running!!!
Natural Dying, and Plants to Dye For both have great info. The thread on black bean dying is on Plants to Dye For, but I have been hopping from one to the other. 

Another plant that has me intrigued is Poinsettia. Next Christmas I am going to collect a bunch to play with.

I did some dying with copper and amonia. Got a nice greeny blue grey with spots of coppery brown. I had forgotten it in a corner, and thought it would be ruined after several weeks. That was a VERY pleasant surprise.

Jacki


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## ChristieAcres (Apr 11, 2009)

Beautiful and can't wait to see what you make from your yarn!


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## romysbaskets (Aug 29, 2009)

So far I spent a lot of time dyeing the fleece. I did spin inbetween so here are the first skeins of dyed yarn along with one creme color natural yarn to show the comparison. I am about to spin the strawberry next, which is a pale pink. I have one more batch I am dyeing today.


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## AverageJo (Sep 24, 2010)

WOW!!! You're having such FUN!! Absolutely love the sheen of that fleece. I know you have a bunch more to go as that was a LOT, but let me know when you're ready to get more and I'll ask my friend what other fleeces she may have available. You're making me want to go gathering now! Let me know if you want me to send you nettle. It grows really good around here. LOL...


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## Pearl B (Sep 27, 2008)

I think they all turned out beautifully!! You do really nice work. :thumb:


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## Kasota (Nov 25, 2013)

Very, very nice! Look at you go!!!! 

PearlB - what have you been up to these days?


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## Pearl B (Sep 27, 2008)

Not nearly enough on the fiber front!! 
Gotta get back to more. I got a good stash of Targhee over the holidays I want to dye. Just trying to decide between my usual food coloring, or try acid dyes, and now maybe berries?! :happy2:


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## romysbaskets (Aug 29, 2009)

There are five more colors to post. I have three more that are simply the natural colors because I separated the fleece by color, there were four. Then I dyed only the creme color with the natural dyes and lastly, I combined my dye for one more batch, so there will be a blueberry, strawberry currant yarn.  After that I will spin up the rest natural colored as I really love them all. For others just learning all of this like me, I thought posting what I did would be helpful.  Practice with a spindle really does increase the speed and provide a more even thickness of the yarn produced. As to how color fast the yarn will be, I can only say that once I dyed the yarns after using a mordant, I washed them with wool soap in hot water and rinsed in hot water til it ran clear. The wash water had color but the rinse water never did. 

This is a variegated colored yarn made from the strawberry.


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## Pearl B (Sep 27, 2008)

What did you use in post 9 to get the golden colored one?


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## romysbaskets (Aug 29, 2009)

Pearl B said:


> What did you use in post 9 to get the golden colored one?


Hey Pearl, 
I wasn't going for that color but really liked how it came out. I used dark roast coffee that I made in a camp style stove top expresso maker. For that yarn, it simmered in a mordant made of vinegar and water for one hour, 1 part v to 4 parts w. When the hour was nearly up, I turned on the burner and made expresso to place the soaked fleece in. Then that simmered for an hour. Then it sat in the same coffee with burner off for 12 hours, was washed with wool soap and rinsed. I got the same color doing this 3 times.


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## Pearl B (Sep 27, 2008)

Thank You Romy!

I think I'm going to give that a try when I start dyeing again. I really like it's golden color.
Dyeing can be fun like that when you get colors you weren't expecting. I've only used food colors, I
really like the unpredictability, when mixed with a few different colors, of them.


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## romysbaskets (Aug 29, 2009)

Pearl B said:


> Thank You Romy!
> 
> I think I'm going to give that a try when I start dyeing again. I really like it's golden of it. color.
> Dyeing can be fun like that enough ou get colors you weren't expecting. I've only used food colors, I
> really like the unpredictability, when mixed with a few different colors, of them.


You are so welcome. I tried a wine dye last night and got an interesting color completely different than what I pictured and will post tomorrow. I did manage to spin a skein out of it with enough for one more. I made enough with coffee for 3 skeins. I thought I would get a brown color or shade with the coffee. ..very surprised when it turned golden.


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## romysbaskets (Aug 29, 2009)

Pearl B said:


> Thank You Romy!
> 
> I think I'm going to give that a try when I start dyeing again. I really like it's golden of it. color.
> Dyeing can be fun like that enough ou get colors you weren't expecting. I've only used food colors, I
> really like the unpredictability, when mixed with a few different colors, of them.


You are so welcome. I tried a wine dye last night and got an interesting color completely different than what I pictured and will post tomorrow. I did manage to spin a skein out of it with enough for one more. I made enough with coffee for 3 skeins. I thought I would get a brown color or shade with the coffee. ..very surprised when it turned golden.


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## romysbaskets (Aug 29, 2009)

I am now up to 30 skeins on the Mohair and over 20 skeins on the Icelandic. Here are pics of the Mohair ones, one skein I gave away last week to a 100 yr old friend of my daughters by mailing it. It takes a lot of time to hand spin..My speed is better and I still have two more garbage bags full of Mohair and a bin full of Icelandic left to spin. The wine came in a shade of pink below.


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## Marchwind (May 10, 2002)

Romy I ant remember, are you spindle spinning these?


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## romysbaskets (Aug 29, 2009)

Marchwind said:


> Romy I ant remember, are you spindle spinning these?


Yes I have my large hand spindle I used for most of it as Loudo ate my little one I was using. I do have a wish for a spinning wheel in with hubby.  It took me two weeks to spin the Icelandic yarn skeins and two weeks to spin the thirty skeins of Mohair. I have never spun on a spinning wheel yet..hope to try that soon. I think the skeins average around 3 ounces or so each. Being that you asked, wow that was a real compliment, they must be coming out ok then.


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## Pearl B (Sep 27, 2008)

Romy if you like hand spindles, you might like the Navajo Spindle. 

It will hold way more than most spinning wheels, and is only $32 at the woolery.
Here's a couple pics of mine. It's a pretty big spindle.


http://www.woolery.com/store/pc/Schacht-Navajo-Spindle-p1090.htm#.VQOjloTn-pF


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## romysbaskets (Aug 29, 2009)

Now that I have my 1880's budget spinning wheel just moving along, I have not done much with my spindle. I find it easy to double ply my single ply using the spindle though. I then started using the spinning wheel to ply as well. 

I saw a post asking about natural dyes, so I am pushing this back up for that question.


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## Forerunner (Mar 23, 2007)

Don't know how I missed this thread, earlier.

What a scrumptious lot of mohair !!!

I couldn't bring myself to dye a natural shade of white fiber, but your efforts and results are certainly impressive.....


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## romysbaskets (Aug 29, 2009)

Forerunner said:


> Don't know how I missed this thread, earlier.
> 
> What a scrumptious lot of mohair !!!
> 
> I couldn't bring myself to dye a natural shade of white fiber, but your efforts and results are certainly impressive.....


It was not white but silvery grey and darker grey. However I only dyed some and left most natural.  Now that I have a working spinning wheel, I am getting some very nice yarn.  I am even double plying! I am up to all kinds of stuff...to be posted soon...


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## Forerunner (Mar 23, 2007)

You got those all those delicious colors from grayish fibers ?
Well now........


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## romysbaskets (Aug 29, 2009)

Forerunner said:


> You got those all those delicious colors from grayish fibers ?
> Well now........


You are so kind and yes, they were shades of grey. There was some very light however. It made a lot of yarn. I am just now beginning to use my homespun yarns.


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