Natural Dyeing - Onion Skin Edition

The weather is becoming rather fall-like here on the farm. The trees have moved from the mass of red, orange and yellow to brown. Today I was able to catch some bright color on the old milk house; the ivy on the south side was at its most vibrant red in the morning sun.

With fall in the air it seemed appropriate to have the house smell like cooked/cooking onions all day. I had saved all the onion skins from this summer, both yellow and red amounting to about 1.75 ounces or just under 50 grams. It was an entire produce bag full. Below it is pictured with about 20 yards of white wool I had spun from my nephew´s sheep.

Before I go any further a disclosure should be made about the equipment being used for dyeing. All the sources I have read about dyeing say the same thing about the vessel to use; it should be stainless steel and a pot you will not use again for cooking. Under nonpandemic times this would mean a quick trip to the thrift store, but we are living in different times. All the stainless steel in this house is used for cooking so I have had to use cleaned and washed 28 ounce tomato sauce can. It worked great for the black walnut dye slurry; however, I am well aware there could be problems. Having said that I placed all of the onion skin in my can, filled it with as much water as would fit and let it simmer for about an hour. And indeed the onion perfume filled the house. I strained the liquid dye from the now boiled onion skins and proceeded to mordant the wool in the same tin can. The mordant process takes two hours, but within 10 minutes I could see some of the onion dye residue was left in my can/dyeing pot despite my washing it. After the two hours in that can this is what I had:

The color is a pale greenish yellow. As Bob Ross always said one doesn´t make mistakes in painting, just happy accidents. So I decided to go with this happy accident; the color was set as is and wool washed. Finally it was time to do the real dyeing. The same process was followed only the wool spent an additional two hours in the onion skin dye slurry and this is what I got.

The two greenish yellow colors look very good together. And I do like the process of making up the dyes. I drink a lot of tea and this process seems like making a tea that takes hours to steep. I learned a good lesson about cleaning the can to dye and in what can be done to change up or fade colors. So it was not only a happy acident, but one I learned something from as well. Here are the three colors I have done so far, black walnut, proper onion dye and leftover onion dye:

Not only is fall in the air, it is also in the colors of wool I am dyeing. Stay tuned for avocado dye. It should be a pink but who knows, my can could help me produce something else.