natural orange

Wow! My first attempt at natural dyeing produced an amazing orange! It's quite incredible. I don't know how 'fast' it is (time will tell), but even when I rinsed the fabric very little colour washed out. I am very excited about this and hopefully this will make its way onto paper in a short while. This orange came from the seeds of the Annatto tree (Bixa Orellano), which apparently is used as a food colouring agent for margarine amongst other things. It certainly is pretty orange - I haven't tried to use any mordants with it yet, just keeping it simple for now.
I am also experimenting with eucalyptus and mango leaves - let's see where this takes me! I've go the fans on full but even so there's quite a strong smell of eucalptus...