Dyeing iron-mordanted yarn in rudbeckia dye bath

One thing I have to say about iron mordanting: DON'T. It takes much less work to do a cool alum mordant and an iron afterbath than to do the iron mordant up front. Also, one has more control of the outcome.

I didn't keep very good notes about this whole dye experiment, nor very many photos. At least the photos I did take have a date-time stamp, so there is a timeline of sorts.

First, I gathered flower heads from Rudbeckia fulgida var. sullivanttii 'Goldsturm' growing in the area of my yard I refer to as The Meadow. These I left to soak in water for several days.

Next, I heated the flowerhead bath for an hour or so, to extract the dye and let it cool overnight.

Meanwhile, I mordanted four small skeins of handspun wool singles in an iron bath. Those I rinsed thoroughly, as iron can be hard on fiber.

Over the next several days, I added a skein to the dye bath, heated the dye bath for an our or so, then let it cool before removing the yarn. I processed one skein at a time, hoping to gain variations in the depth of color. It didn't work like I expected - all I got was dark gray with little variation. I finished by dyeing a skein of rhubarb leaf mordanted Cascade 220.

The handspun singles all look about the same, even the ones that were put into an "exhausted" dye bath. The skein of Cascade 220 that was not iron-mordanted but mordanted with rhubarb leaf came out dull, which I suspect is an aspect of the rhubarb leaf mordant. At least it looks different from the others.

So what did I do wrong? For one thing, I neglected to weigh the plant material, to get an idea of just how much yarn could be dyed with it. Mordanting the yarn with iron I believe corrupted the dye bath, so I ended up with dark gray yarn instead of the dark green I was aiming for. I was not careful, nor did I take my time and plan things out before hand. Hopefully, lessons learned!