Seeing Red! Eucalyptus Dye
by Judith Towers
When Becky and I went to Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden a few years ago to make plans for a dye workshop there, we each came away with a trunkful of eucalyptus branches which had been pruned that day. I put mine in the tool shed where they dried out and remained their usual gray-green color. Each time I went to get a rake or the lawn mower, I shoved the branches aside, vowing to strip the leaves, grind them up, and begin the fermentation process which many dyers recommend. It's funny how the promise of an exotic color can make a dyer enjoy all sorts of lengthy, smell, messy, involved preparations. This one was going to be red!
It was late summer before I decided it was time. I hauled out my leaf mulcher, stripped off the dried leaves, dropped them in and collected the ground up particles in a big garbage bag. I filled my large canning pot about 3/4 full of leaves; then added 4 gallons of tap water. After about three weeks of soaking outside, fermenting, short simmering, straining (leaves were enclosed in nylon hosiery bags and returned to the dyepot before fibers were put in), and a total of 12-15 hours of intermittent simmering with fibers in the pot, I have an array of colors ranging from apricot through orange to rusty red. No mordant was used. (Cotton, silk, linen, and soy silk did not take up much color.) The first exhaust pot was almost as red as the first dyebath. The second exhaust pot yielded rust color. If you try this, keep it around for a while. Who knows - you might be able to simmer it and use it again and again!
A word of caution: it is wise to cook this pot outside unless you want your whole house to smell like Vicks VapoRub!
Guess what! My neighbor cut down a dying eucalyptus tree this summer, and gave me all of the leaves!
I’ll soon be seeing red again, and I’ll share with you!!
