Dyeing Yarn with Clay

 Last year I went to a workshop where we dyed linen with different colors of clay which are commercially available and also used for things like frescos. A bit after that, my house needed some foundation work done and some very clay-ey stuff emerged along with dirt.  And I thought...why not try with yarn?

First of all, my Georgia clay (I'm in Chatham County near the ocean) is a tan-brown color, not red. Thanks to youtube, I learned how to extract clay from dirt. I know that this is how some people harvest clay for pottery and such. First I tried making some little shapes with holes...warp weight potential?

Next I tried cotton and wool yarns. I soaked the yarns in soy milk to mordant them for a good 48 hours first. I mixed clay with a good bit of soy milk to get a thick paste, and wedged a small skein in between slabs of clay/soy. I put it in the fridge in a container for a couple of days.

Left, sheep's wool, right, cotton, both handspun. My samples needed quite a bit of rinsing and are still stiff, especially the cotton. There is still a good bit of clay in there. Compared to using clay on linen, the linen also stiffened but it took the color better, and I think that the cotton, as a cellulose fiber, took the color better. II think that I wiill be more apt to use my clay for modeling rather than dyeing! But it is a rather nice novelty and I'll probably weave with my samples.