Like so many of us around the world, these last few weeks have been strange and challenging as our lives have gone into lockdown due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Here in the UK this began officially on 23 March, and with our daily allowance of exercise, I began to discover my immediate environment closely for the first time really.
I am very fortunate to live in a beautiful part of the country outside Oxford, in a village boasting only one posting box by way of conveniences, but full of wildlife and vegetation. There are footpaths galore and so my daily walks have been a revelation to my senses and hugely improved my knowledge of trees and shrubs in the process. I decided to document 'my lockdown" by foraging each day for a different plant and examine its natural dyeing capability, hence this blog creation.....
As I write this, we are almost 8 weeks into lockdown with plenty of samples generated but these will continue for some weeks to come I suspect.
I am largely a felting textile artist so I am concentrating on dyeing wool, creating samples in the form of feltable yarn and wool gauze fabric and ,as you'll soon gather, I am pretty much a fast learning novice at natural dyeing. My background in pharmacy does however help with documenting and note taking - details which still appeal to me even so many years after researching at a laboratory bench.
What I propose to do with the samples will come in a later post...but for now I'm just enjoying the process
As I write this, we are almost 8 weeks into lockdown with plenty of samples generated but these will continue for some weeks to come I suspect.
I am largely a felting textile artist so I am concentrating on dyeing wool, creating samples in the form of feltable yarn and wool gauze fabric and ,as you'll soon gather, I am pretty much a fast learning novice at natural dyeing. My background in pharmacy does however help with documenting and note taking - details which still appeal to me even so many years after researching at a laboratory bench.
What I propose to do with the samples will come in a later post...but for now I'm just enjoying the process
I also have to say at this point that my go-to fount of all knowledge in this project is Jenny Dean's Wild Colour book, and my initial successes have been entirely due to her wonderful information and ongoing blogs from her website
All dyeing was done in my laundry area, away from the kitchen and food, and using utensils and urns etc that I reserve for this purpose. I tend to wear gloves only when I'm mordanting or modifying the fabric with alum, copper water or iron water, and work with the extractor fan on or an open window, but please take whatever precautions you feel necessary for yourself should you wish to try this.
I also found out quickly that I needed waterproof labels for the fibres to prevent the obvious questions - did I mordant this one? - don't know what others use but cut tags of template plastic were ideal in and out of the pot!
All dyeing was done in my laundry area, away from the kitchen and food, and using utensils and urns etc that I reserve for this purpose. I tend to wear gloves only when I'm mordanting or modifying the fabric with alum, copper water or iron water, and work with the extractor fan on or an open window, but please take whatever precautions you feel necessary for yourself should you wish to try this.
I also found out quickly that I needed waterproof labels for the fibres to prevent the obvious questions - did I mordant this one? - don't know what others use but cut tags of template plastic were ideal in and out of the pot!
Cow parsley
Cow parsley has to be the most abundant at this time of year and this was taken right behind our fence on a public footpath. From such a tiny white flower you get a great shade of yellow. The flower heads and some of the stalks (about 300%WOF) were brought to a simmer in water for about 45 mins, the dyepot strained of plant material, the fibres (alum mordanted) added and simmered for an hour then allowed to cool overnight. The yarn on the right and the wool gauze were copper modified later.
Dandelion
Dandelion heads were easily gathered, treated the same way as the cow parsley, to dye the fibres.
They gave similiar tones of yellows (alum mordanted) and greens (copper modified) depite the plant material being about 400% WOF).
They gave similiar tones of yellows (alum mordanted) and greens (copper modified) depite the plant material being about 400% WOF).
Nettles
The fibres and gauze were alum mordanted but not modified with copper water. The yellow yarn on the left was dyed simply without further heat, placed in the bucket of nettle tips (300%wof) which had been steeping in water overnight. I'd read a blog online that produced shades of grey-green from nettles so I wondered if heat was required to extract the dye. I simmered the plant material for an hour, strained the liquid, added fibres simmering for a further hour. The olive yarn and gauze on the right of the photo resulted and I never got a grey-green. I suspect alum was not used by the other blogger as soya milk was mentioned in the preparation of her fibres.
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