community of dyers

If I understood well, you were dyeing with fruit juices.

I have three possible thoughts on this what could happen to change to tone.

1) fruit juices can react little bit like pH-tester (are you sure, that both pieces have the same pH?

2) many dyes react to the deat, but the color changes back when the humidity is back.

3) what is the bottom surface of your iron made of? Iron? Plastics?

Jaja, I was using MX as acid dyes on silk, the avocado was the color description. If I had an avocado that color I'd eat it, not waste it by trying to dye something!

Yes, I thought perhaps the heat had done something to the crepe surface -- changed its form. Both scarves were room temperature when they went into the warm dyebath.

My iron is metal with a little bit of a slippery coating so it glides smoothly. Don't know what kind of slippery stuff it is.

One thought I had would be to take two other identical scarves made of some other silk weave -- a crepe de chine, or charmeuse, for example -- and do the same steps to see if ironing would make a difference with those weaves. I'm suspecting it's the crepe weave that's the issue. Like the difference between a big fluffy sweater that's been hung to dry vs. that same sweater if it were ironed dry, it would look all flat. That's all I can think of, that the iron smooshed the fibers flat and disallowed the availability of dye sites in those in-between places.

If I do that experiment, I will let you know...

--Pia

You can dye with avocados, but, although they are green, the result is an uninteresting dull dark brown that doesn't appeal to me at all. I've never wanted to try it.