Spinach Madeleine to Dye For!

Well today was the day for me to make the big triple batch of one of our family's favorite Thanksgiving dishes, Spinach Madeleine. Some of it is for my husband who is pet sitting and working this year instead of traveling north to Frisco, some of it is for the church pot-luck tomorrow and 85% of it is for my cousin Carmen's Thanksgiving feast.

I think the recipe orginally came from the famous River Road Recipes cookbook;but, my copy is from a list of family recipes my beloved Aunt Celeste typed up years ago and distributed to everyone.

For part of the recipe you have to drain the spinach and reserve the "liquor" (green spinach water) for adding to the recipe later. When I was doing that step it occured to me that I could probably dye fabric with the leftover spinach liquor that wasn't going into the dish!

Here's the spinach and the reserved liquor.

Here is the fabric added to the spinach liquor. I used plain muslin and PFD (prepared for dyeing) fabric to compare the results. PFD fabric is treated so that it takes up the dye more readily.
I added a lot of salt thinking it might help with the dyeing and I boiled it and then let it sit w/ the heat turned off for a few hours.

Here's how it turned out after washing out the spinach remnants and ironing it. The plain musling is on the left and the PFD is on the right. The top fabrics are what they looked like before dyeing. I had no idea PFD fabric would turn out so differently! I did this a while back with the blueberry juice that you are supposed to drain from the canned blueberries that come in the box of muffin mix. I didn't have any PFD fabric then so I just used muslin. It came out very light blue. I have a feeling that if I do it again w/ PFD fabric, I'd get much better results!

By the way, I did finish the triple batch, too. Spinach Madeleine to DYE for!