I may not know a lot but I think I can recognize the colour orange when I see it. I can demonstrate:
These pumpkins and gourds are orange:
Theses leaves are orange.
So, I when I read that marigolds, when used as a dye, will invariably give a stunning shade of orange I eagerly planted a couple of rows. Into the dye pot they went where they simmered until all the colour left them. I put in some pre-mordanted wool and got a colour that was definitely not orange.
I don’t know what you would call this colour but I think it is reminiscent of 1970’s carpeting. Thinking that I had made some odd and isolated mistake I tried again using flowers from the same plants but a different dye pot. I got the exact same colour. I have no idea what went wrong. Variations in colour is one of the interesting things about natural dyes – you just never know what you are going to get- but I understood that marigolds were one of the more predictable dyes. Oh well, more research is required.
