#dyestuff

But that's not what I picked them for. I used the petals and leaves for dyestuff! (and am gonna test the heads themselves as well)

First I took the flower petals and soaked them overnight. Meanwhile, I soaked some silk in iron mordant and some in copper mordant. Then I set them to simmer along with a jar of coneflower leaves (nothing in them yet)

Above is the iron mordanted (top grey) and copper mordanted (bottom tan)

and then here they are preparing to simmer in a pot of water. My dad actually recommended i try out the coffee pot after out coffemaker broke. He read about using one in a book about dyeing fibers specifically for fly-tying, aka making flies/lures for fishing. He's quite skilled in it, as well as the fishing itself :D

Once they finished simmering, the copper actually got as dark as the iron! The only difference is that it's slightly greener (photo above is copper on top, iron on bottom)

I also kept some of the mordanted silk, but left them outside to dry out and oxidize instead of putting them in a dyebath. The iron, aka the lovely rufous color, made the silk a weird texture that I fear might mean it's damaged. Iron will definitely do that if you're not careful! The light pastel-aquamarine-ish copper feels more like normal silk, which makes sense since I've heard it's less harsh on wool than iron.

(also note, i'm handling them when dry, but wear gloves when holding WET mordanted fibers, especially copper!!! better safe than sorry)

Anyways, here's the results compared to an undyed bit of silk! I remember I got a deeper green last year when I tried the petals with iron on wool. The technique is slightly altered of course (premordanting + glass container on silk this year, mixing iron directly into bath + aluminum pot on wool last year)