First, I started off by boiling two beetroots in a pot for about 45 minutes. Then I drained it and started simmering the fabrics in the remaining liquid. However, there was barely enough liquid to submerge the fabric, so I added some water and kept the fire extremely low, simmering the fabric for half an hour.
I took it out and put the wool and a piece of cotton in the alium mixture and submerged it for about half an hour. Then I drained the fabrics and squeezed out the excess dye, leaving them out to dry.
I chose beetroot and expected it to dye the fibers a dark pinkish purple. The dyed-not washed cotton had the strongest color, while the dyed-washed cotton became quite faded and the dyed-mordant-washed was somewhere in between. However, perhaps it was because I didn’t have enough of the dye, but it dyed the wool an orange color instead, although the cottons were dyed pink. There was also not much difference in the color of the washed wool and the unwashed wool, again maybe because I didn’t have enough dye, because when I did the shibori dyeing technique using blueberries instead, it dyed the fabric a nice deep purple.
The water picked up traces of beetroot and alum before going down the drain, where it then goes down the pipe in the sewage system, joining other wastewater to eventually end up at a wastewater treatment plant. Here, the wastewater is processed and cleaned through multiple stages and is then put back into the environment, typically a river, where it is then able to be reused again in the sink.
