Bugs Part 2, on Natty Linen Indio

One of my sweet mama friends sent me a glorious old Didymos Natty Linen Indio to pretty up. It was a pre-middle marker and double linen thread wrap...Oh the beauty...I almost felt guilty putting color on it, but it really was the perfect canvas for the beautiful colors that come from the natural dye Cochineal. Now I had just completed a cochineal dye job on a natty wool indio, and was sort of expecting similar results...But alas, wool behaves differently than linen...So our adventure into the pink waters began...

 here we have the NLI simmering in the dye pot with strained cochineal extract, and on the other burner more bugs were simmering away...releasing their beautiful colors...

 Here I scrunched the fabric into a container so it could sit overnight in the mixture of cochineal and Alum.

So after 24 hours in the container, they went for several hot rinses with synthrapol

Beautiful shades of pink so far, but we were after more depth of color. So, the dye extract got boiled up again, adding more bugs each time.

 Now we were making progress!!! I also added 2 Tums to the dye pot...adding chalk to our hard water definitely increased the depth of color and brought out the rosiness of the red dye extract.

 Hanging to dry overnight.

And here it was dry, in all its perfect pink glory!

 Lots of subtle mottling throughout, much like a watercolor painting,

As I always do, I messaged my friend with the progress pictures and anxiously awaited a yay or nay. I felt like it was the perfect girly pink, but I was willing to give it one more night in the dye bath! She was thrilled and gave 2 thumbs up. So I went about steam ironing it, twice, haha. Which I always do with linen since it tends to feel more beastly after its been hung to dry.
I think Cochineal is my favorite pink dye now!