Here we have about 170g of cotton that I cooked, twice, in some washing soda and dish soap. Commercial cotton yarn contains sizing that has to be cooked out if you want to dye it.

After scouring, the cotton needs a mordant. I used about 5% (of the fiber weight) of aluminum acetate. You don’t need to boil the cotton - just put it and the dissolved mordant into a bucket filled with hot tap water, and let it sit for about an hour. After that, I added about 5% (of the fiber weight) of calcium carbonate, stirred it, and let it sit overnight.

But I was curious about how much I had. It is just under half of the weight of my fiber.

I don’t have that much fiber, so I will make a nice, thick dye.

The house smells like French onion soup. My family is so relieved when I say that I am making onion dye and not cabbage dye.

I am hoping for a deep orange.

This is promising - the yarn is already taking color after only a few seconds.

Hopes are high! We shall see what rinsing and drying brings. Cotton does tend to darken after it dries.

The color is not as vibrant as it was when the cotton was in the dye pot, but it is a nice color, and I have noticed that sometimes the color can intensify a bit even after the yarn is dried.

I was at first considering using an iron mordant on some of this yarn, but then I decided that I was feeling the orange. Now I think that I should mordant at least a little bit of the yarn so you can see the change the iron makes. Will do, will update.