Dying with eucalyptus leaves

Today I finally tried dying some silk with eucalyptus leaves.  I got the leaves from some trees on campus while I was waiting for Grasshopper (seriously, that is the man's name) to take me to the car fixing place.  There are some mature trees not far from the library, but I've no idea what species they are.

My inspiration for this was reading about India Flint in a Fibrearts journal where she was featured along with her work. 

So, having leaves and silk I laid out some lengths of fabric and placed the leaves on it.

Then I rolled them around some sticks and tied them up with some cotton.

Then put them in a pot to boil for a while.  You can see the water has started to colour from the leaves in this photo.

I felt a bit like a witch making potion! It was quite magical to unwrap the bundles and find this.

I have to admit, I'm not sure how colour fast these will be.  I'll try one out in my felting and see if the soap makes it disappear ;-)  But we'll see.  I liked the effect, but I think I could have boiled it a bit longer and tied the bundles a bit tighter.