Dyeing the Greens

The photo of my samples above also has dyed fibres from half a dozen leaves of Chinese Woad (Isatis Indigotica). The orange fibres were for Dyers Chamomile with a touch of ammonia. The colour was so fabulous none of us wanted to over dye !




Posted by Helen

These last two summers I have run workshops in my studio using dye plants from the garden. This year I could only manage two workshops as I am teaching for a week at the Lincoln summer school for weavers spinners and dyers. The first one which I ran last weekend was Dyeing the Greens (The other is Dyeing the Blues on August 29th) As all natural dyer know greens are rare and even where you can get them they are mostly olive greens and dark greens. So I had great fun devising different ways to get there. We achieved green by modification of yellows from Elderflower leaves ( Sambucus Nigra), Dyers Chamomile (Anthemis Tinctoria), Mullien (Verbascum Thapsus) Yarrow (Achillea Millefolium) Tansy (Tanacetum Vulgare)-this was at the last minute as someone said they had got some green from Tansy leaves -with either ferrous sulphate or copper sulphate made up by dissolving 2 g in 100ml of water (Jenny Dean's recipe). We overdyed Weld (Reseda Luteola) in Indigo, and used Indigo Sulphonate mixed with Fustic extract. Indigo Sulphonate is Indigo dissolved in concentrated Sulphuric acid and was discovered inthe 1700's and is probably one of the first chemical dyes. It is often called saxon blue and while it is not as lightfast as indigo itself it gives a fabulously strong blue with a slight green tinge. I use Jim Liles recipe in the Art and Craft of Natural Dyeing , but Trudy Von Stralen also has one in her book Indigo Madder and Marigold. Finally we ended up by painting some merino tops and silk cap with extracts using green, osage orange and fustic with a little logwood grey to make the green turquoise.
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Friends, Dye Garden, Mordants , Health and textured yarn

Posted by Helen
Where would we be without friends? My friends have always been very important to me but over the last few weeks I have come to value them all very much. This is what one good fairy friend turned up with the other day. Something to crochet with from her own stash, some are handspun yarns and others are interesting yarns she has picked up. yum! yum! . So I made a hat for her. The turquoise is from the merino 18.5 micron dyed with Saxon blue (indigo sulphonate)I dyed a couple of months ago,and spun last week, but I added in some of the sparkly yarn and then some terracotta and purple. Here is the result although I plan to add a large flower.

The second thing she bought (apart from the cherries which I really enjoyed :)) was " A BOOK" ! This lovely book is full of different ways to create interesting textured yarn. Now it may surprise some people to know that I can spin a smooth even yarn if I have too and if I put my mind to it but I get so bored! I can never resist adding something in, so this book is just up my street. The book is Intertwined,The Art of Handspun Yarn,Modern Patterns and Creative Spinning Lexi Boeger ISBN-13:978-1-59253-374-9 published by www.quarrybooks.com.It is full of interesting textured and innovative yarns with clear instructions on how to spin them (although you do have to know how to spin -it is not a beginners book). There are projects too but I rarely want to follow some one else's projects preferring to invent my own.

The Dye Garden -or rather bits of it in January.The first snowdrops are out.When Enys came three days ago there was no sign of them but today here they are. Here too is some very healthy looking weld and my Chinese Woad.



My health is continuing to improve with some minor setbacks. An investigation has shown no further complications,which is very good news. As the Consultant said I have "just" had pneumonia but she did say this is a serious illness and I can expect it to take three months before I feel like my old self :(
While in recovery from my recent investigation I read more on mordanting and also Brazilwood as Debbie Bamford is running a red dyeing workshop on the Online Guild in March. She wants us to put some into soak now as it improves with age. I haven't done it that yet but I will tomorrow.
Mordanting:I have written 7 pages so far on the history of mordanting, the use of mordants worldwide and on alum .What do I do? Extract some of it for the blog or publish the whole lot.What do you think? How much do you want to read about mordanting?