It is almost always time to prune the dill.  It’s rampant.  So at this last trimming time, early in November, I stuffed a handful of the tiny leaves into a small jar with a small piece of silk and tap water into which I’d added a couple of teaspoons of soda ash.  The jar has, since then, been sitting outside in the heat of a Perth summer.

Nearly two months later I’ve emptied the jar.  The dill looked as green as when it went into the jar.  The fabric is also green! So much so that, rather than wait to see if it’s fugitive or not, I’ve put a lot more dill into a much larger jar with a lot more silk. In another two months I hope to have a usable amount of lovely green silk fabric like this:

Left: silk fabric solar dyed with dill. Right: The white undyed silk fabric.

I have a list of things you can be doing while you only seem to be reading a book…..solar dyeing is one of them!