Browns

Not a colour I often get asked for but earlier on this week one of my regular customers emailed me to ask for 200g of  brown . I had some rhubarb root with iron but not much else so enjoying the challenge I set to soaking and mordanting.
 I decided to go for the boiled madder brown, cutch and logwood (chocolate brown)  and because I had  had a brown recently with eucalyptus leaves and iron  (when I was trying to get black) I decided to try that. (Why did I not do just cutch?I haven't an  idea just trying to be too clever by half I think plus the fact that cutch on wool is not a strong brown)
Natural dyes are perverse,  maddening and never do what you want .  The boiled madder refused to go brown -now how often have you seen in dye books "be careful not to raise the temperature of the bath too high as you  will get a brown"! Over dyed orange madder in indigo normally gives a wonderful warm brown but this time gave me a fabulous purple.  If I had been trying for purple I would have got brown. The eucalyptus which gave a wonderful warm brown with iron is giving a soft greens  browns and almost creams ,but here the difference must have been in the soaking time as previously it was soaked for  at least a week after boiling.  The cutch and logwood came out a wonderful dark grey.  I added some fustic extract why I don't know I think that morning my brain was a bit addled  and I suppose because until I rinsed it I  thought it was purple) and it went green so I added some madder extract and that is still in the pot waiting to be rinsed. All these" not browns but something else"  is partly because I  tend not to keep enough records-mea culpa- and also because I do just tend  to dye rather than dyeing for particular colours but  it would have been infuriating if I had not got such a fabulous grey and also the purple from madder and indigo which  is lovely. I can use all the colours and sell them so it is not a problem really but dyeing for specific colour is not my forte.

Here are some of them hanging on the line.
Above a very exhausted madder giving beige, Cutch/logwood/fustic. Eucalpyptus and iron  (also on right). Madder overdyed in indigo. Cutch/logwood first bath.   Next to it just out the bath so very wet is madder and iron.  A lovely dark red not really a brown. Hiding shyly under the  dark indigo-incidentally at least 8 dips- is a brown.Orange madder overdyed in indigo second attempt.

In more detail.
The over dyeing in indigo is patchy because I was using quite a small vat.  Now wouldn't you think I would  know better!
Now I will go and rinse the remainder out.  Also I shall be rinsing out to day some of the hand painted 15micron merino I dyed yesterday with extracts.  They are looking fabulous. I am teaching the way to felt with  this fabulous fibre  at Malvern Hills Summer School in August in one day workshop.

Bits and Pieces from the Dye Garden

Just to cheer the spirits- a view from our little pond across the grandly named patio or  terrace -really a piece of uneven paving stones to the studio.  Not many dye plants as such although the lilies are  a pleasure however in the immediate foreground is Purple Loostrife Lythrum salicaria just coming into flower, on ne of the plants high in tannin.   The pond is thronged at the moment with birds having sips of water and visiting dogs prefer the pond water to nice clean bowls of water any day.

I had been getting ready for a workshop with a lovely group of ladies known as the Fiesty Felters in Shrewsbury making and painting fine felt with extract dyes.  Here on the line are samples of the ten dyes we used.
Logwood purple, Bodfari green, , Fustic, Annatto, Madder,Pomegrante Lac.Cutch waste,Cochineal and Logwood grey.

The Silk caps were painted with all ten dyes. I didn't have time to take photos of the workshop -but it seemed to go well.  They were nice and very talented bunch who bought  a lot! Particularly my inks .  I sold all I took bar a few bottles and am now completely out of bronze and blue so will need to get going on those.  Both are complicated and take time. 

I said this was a post  was a bits and  pieces! Here are some of the  flowers I have picked to dry.
Top:marigold ( tagetes spp),  Coreopsis spp, Cosmos spp.
And finally a pot of yarrow.  The fibres were a pale yellow. I added a bit of ammonia to brighten the yellow and left it overnight and now it has gone slightly green.  I will rinse it out to day  and see what the colour is then but it looks an intriguing greeny yellow.

A Working Studio,Organised Chaos or What the BBC saw!

Dot Lumb in her blog Fibre 2 Fabric mentioned the state of her studio saying that the place that had been immaculate two years ago was now almost too full to move in. It set me thinking about my studio. One fellow artist just says "Oh my God" whenever he sees it Early on in the week I taught 7 people Felt Beyond the Boundaries-incidentally one of favourite workshops- in a beautiful pottery studio ( Ceri Pottery) high in the hills near Newtown in Powys. Her large studio with two pottery wheels and lots of working space was immaculate and really put mine to shame. My worse enemy could not describe mine as immaculate and here it is in all its organised chaos glory with photos from the doors at either end. This is what the BBC saw when they came interested in running a children programme .
I thought it would be fascinating to have a show of working places. What does your studio look like?
Mine I realise is going to have a face lift before the Open Studio event later this year Helfa Gelf. sigh.When?I don't know and where will everything go while I wash down the walls and paint? I know it needs to be done and I will feel better for it but ..............................arrgh!

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.
Welcome to all the new followers - I hope you enjoy the blog- do drop by and say hello

Sheep silk

Posted by Helen
I have been dyeing merino tops now for years firstly because I wanted to use naturally dyed merino tops myself in my own work then for my own workshops. I have had them for sale on my website but with a limited success mostly,I think, because the photography does not really do justice to the colours. However I have been selling more and more and getting lots of positive comments back so I have decided to have a big run at dyeing merino tops (I am so glad that I did not know till after I had been dyeing successfully fora number of years that -"you can't dye merino tops as they felt"). As my husband was working all over Easter I have had a free run in the studio. Apart form walking the dog in the glorious sunshine I have been happily dyeing and here are some of results.
Over the years I have developed my own technique for dyeing these tops with minimum felting. I am very proud of them and just love the feel as I run my fingers through the wool. I dye a lot of the 18.5merinos which is the finest wool we can get here and what I use for stoles and scarves.I feel most envious of India Flints 15 micron merino. What must that feel like? The 18.5 micron merino feels, as a friend of mine describes it, as the nearest to sheep silk .

Dyeing the greens

I haven't had many merino tops for sale on my website recently. There are a number of reasons for this. One is that my of my fibres really are one offs, so each time I put them for sale I have to photo them, resize, and write the blurb all for £4.25. Then a little light bulb went off in my head and I spent a long time working out range of repeatable colours of my own recipes. This however has not really worked partly because I don't really want to do that as I like the serendipity of not quite knowing what is coming out the dye pot, for example I know that 50% madder/50% cochineal will give me a red but I like it that each time it is slightly different, and partly because it gives me too limited a palette. Then my students/customers and friends said to me that the colours on the website did not do justice to my fibres. Finally I found I was really only just keeping pace with dyeing fibres for packs for my workshops and recently at every workshop armfuls of dyed fibres have just walked out with sometimes legs and a head just visible behind.
Finally despite the limited range on my website orders have picked up especially for the greens. So here is a picture of my most recent greens-the grass green on the top. Persian berries over dyed in indigo gives some of my favourite greens in winter. Normally I dye yellow then over dye in indigo but this time I also dyed in indigo first and then over dyed in Persian berry yellow. Something happened that I have noticed before namely that the take up of yellow is very poor suggesting to me that the indigo is blocking the receptor sites for the mordant. However I am not worried as it gave a fabulous turquoise. One 100g bump of merino came out beautifully patchy with yellow blues and greens almost as if hand painted. I could not repeat that one if I tried.
However the colours aren't as gorgeous on the photos in real life-so disappointing and the turquoises don't really look turquoise. :(
Now huge orders of raw fibres have arrived 23 micron merino , 18.5 micron merino,lovely yummy mixtures of the 18.5 merino with angora and with silk as well as self indulgent cashmere and silk and camel and silk . Finally some gorgeous white soft silky mohair from Leslie Prior of Devon Fine Fibres. It only arrived yesterday but I have washed one batch and now I am itching to spin it as I love mohair. So I am starting to dye ready for Wonderwool, more up and coming workshops and for the website.

Tagged and colours

I have been tagged! I have been tagged by Tumbleweed. I did not know what I had to do but apparently I have to list 7 little known facts about myself and pass the baton on towards 7 others. It seems a bit of mild fun so with apologies to the next seven victims I decided to pick up the challenge

Now I have found some more rules for this elsewhere and here they are:

The rules of this Tag are:

1. Link to the person who tagged you.

2. Post the rules on your blog.

3. Write seven little known facts about yourself.

4. Tag seven people at the end of your post and link to them.

5. Let each person know they’ve been tagged and leave a comment on their blog

6. Let the tagger know when your entry is posted

7 little know facts about myself

1. My favourite hand stitch is a french knot but I am too lazy to hand stitch much
2. I am 4ft 9 inches and my eldest son is 6ft 2"


3. I feel colour.


4. My eyes are hazel


5. If I am feeling tired and down I will retire to bed with a Georgette Heyer -writer of regency romances or Dick Francis's racing thrillers



6. I have a dog called Walnut and here is a picture of her on the sofa with her head on an expensive cushion inspired by Miro we bought at an exhibition at the V&A on surrealists.


7. I have always secretly wanted to be a helicopter pilot
   
   Here are my seven, Leena, Bettina, Anne Robin, Sue Nina Cedar

The merino's below have been dyed in golden rod overdyed with indigo, golden rods, green extract, madder, logwood, cochineal and cochineal /madder exhaust

I have also posted photo of all the fibres I dyed for my most recent workshop, Felt Mittens, I dyed dyed a range of merino ,merino/angora cross and merino/silk The merino in this case being 18.5 micron ( ie very fine). The swirls of fibres have silk cap layers stuck in the tops. I fully intended to show you a picture of the finished mittens alongside but alas for my good intentions I was so busy rushing around and helping a few at the end to finish their mittens it did not happen. As it was one of the students made tea and handed around chocolate cake. It is the story of my teaching life, I never have a chance to take pictures ,or if I do they are hasty snaps which tend not to do justice to anybody. So you will have to just take if from me that the some fantastic mittens were made. One lady made a very long one in lime green that came nearly to her elbow. It looked just like one of those evening gloves people used to wear with long evening dresses. It was so finely moulded on her hand I thought we might have to cut it off but no she managed to pull it on and off. Another was a pair made with cochineal dyed merino and silk. Enys was made up because she made a bright green pair to go with her green velvet coat.

The red photo is red teeswater which a patient customer has been asking me to dye for her for the last three months. The really bright red is cochineal /madder, the red is brazilwood/madder cochineal extracts which as you can see has given some rather pink shades.

No reds but turquoise and artisans.

I started to blog the other day -meditating on whether I had been hit by the recession ( unofficial as yet but definitely here). Well I nearly fell asleep reading it so I decided not to inflict it on you either.

I have been dyeing , but the sort of unremarkable routine dyeing of fibres for lots and lots of up and coming workshops. As I was making up packs I got panicked by lack of certain colours so I have been doing much panic stricken dyeing mostly greens and purples and thisis despite the fact that my studio is a sea of boxes full of dyed fibres. I usually use the extracts for emergency dyeing but even with them and mixing I really have a problem with getting reds, because a) I have soft water i.e. not easy to get red from madder , b) a lot of reds turn towards the purple when felted (it is the alkalinity of the soap that does it). Brazilwood is the worse for this. I then discovered to my dismay I am out of bugs, although I could have sworn I still had a 200g left-

:( so I can't do my favourite cochineal/madder mix for reds. No reds. Ho hum! I have got turquoise though, lots and lots of yummy turquoise, using "green" extract over dyed with indigo.

I am simmering cosmos as I write so tomorrow or possibly Sunday there will be an update on that! ( it is looking promising with a deep orange coloured bath from 300g of flowers).

PS What do you call a craft market when the word craft has been so bastardised. As for handicrafts -bleh. I have come up with "Artisan Market" with a nod of thanks to Karen Casselman who uses this instead of crafts. I would be interested to know do you all who read my blog think artisans is better than crafts person or man/women and is Artisan Market better than craft market?

garden in autumn

Enys came round for her gardening stint today and you can see her looking pensive in the background with a visiting springer spaniel-mine is out of shot.

I am running a workshop tomorrow to which Enys is coming. She came to survey my packs and decided I had not got enough range of colours. "You need golds, terracotta and green packs" she said doing her usual job of getting me organised. My studio which had looked reasonably tidy ended up looking as if Attila the Hun had been for a visit but we made up some fabulous packs so tomorrow my 9 students will have a choice of no less than 18 yummy packs . I have my eye on one which I find really exciting, dark reds, soft greenish greys with some lovely patterned fabrics for the surfaces so I hope that it will get left and I can use it as my demo.

Enys parting shot to me was " you need to use the cosmos for dyeing". You can see these in the pictures and they look so lovely I can hardly bear to cut them but Enys says they won't last much longer, I have not used them before but according to John and Margaret Cannon in Dye Plants and Dyeing they contain similar dyes to coreopsis.

Baptisia Australis

Posted by Helen
Photo shows the Baptisia Australis propped up by the pole. Hanging over the top is the flowering head of Persicaria Tinctoria -note the sun putting in a rare appearance!

Today while picking rhubarb leaves in Enys garden I mentioned I was going to see whether there was any indigotin in my Baptisia Australis of which I have one in a pot outside my sitting room window, at which Enys promptly dived into her jungle and heaved out a great bunch of it. Weighed it proved to be 150g with stalks.

When I got back I went to check the details in Dye Plants and Dyeing by Margaret and John Cannon (published by The Herbert Press Limited in association with the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew) one of my "bibles" of dyeing and realised I had made a stupid mistake. It is Baptisia Tinctoria which is repute to contain indigotin, the Australis is said to give a green with the leaves. I checked with Enys who said it was definitely the Australis we both had as she can't get hold of the Tinctoria .

So I chopped up the leaves and stalks and put them, covered with water, in a pot to dye, which now means my last available heat source in the studio is in use. The two hot plates are fermenting madder and indigo. In the slow cookers are weld, golden rod, madder and now Baptisia Australis. One electric ring has a bath from Lythrum Salicaria which dyed a brown yesterday. I have just added 1 teaspoon of iron to and to my delight it looks as if it going to go black, previously I have only got a grey from purple loostrife. On the other electric ring is the 1.2 kilo of rhubarb leaves being gently heated to produce oxalic acid and the final pot contains 400g of 18.5 micron merino being mordanted in preparation for a big dyeing session ready for Felt Stoles at Burton Manor. And I am going to have a glass of wine!

Dyeing the Blues

Posted by Helen

Here is Maureen delighted with the colour of her hand spun yarn at the Dyeing the Blues Workshop

Yesterday I held the last of a series of natural dyeing workshops held in the studio here over the summer. This one was Dyeing the Blues and covered dyeing with a variety of sources of indigotin. I decided to roughly follow the path that dyeing the blues would have taken in history. so we started by picking woad ( Isatis Tinctoria) and the Chinese Woad (Isatis indigotica) which turned out to be covered in lots of green caterpillars happily munching away. We tore the leaves up,having removed the caterpillars, and covered with boiling water. After twenty minutes we squeezed out the leaves and added washing soda to the liquid. I put in a bit too much and the pH was 10. My students energetically beat the liquid and the froth turned an astonishing deep deep blue. I had never had this before. Was it the time of the year? The hard beating? Or the unusually high pH , I usually have a pH of 9). Unfortunately I took few photos. I find it difficult to take photos at workshops as I am always racing around keeping everything running smoothly so there were none of this stage. I added thiourea dioxide to reduce the vat

The next vat was an introduction to a fermentation vat. I had a large one with about 9 litres in which was a madder/bran vat started four day ago. This too produced very dark blue fibres nearly a midnight blue. The indigotin in this vat came from Indigofera Tinctoria.

My students then made a stock solution also with indigotin from Indigofera Tinctoria ready to make a modern vat and we went off for lunch.

After lunch we dyed with the woad vat. This gave a deep blue the deepest colour I have ever had from fresh woad leaves. I have included a photo of the increasing depth of colour from repeated dippings from a previous workshop as a pointof comparison . The woad dyed the equivalent of no 10 ( reading from left to right starting at the top left).

Time seemed to vanish and we rushed around dyeing with what I described a Modern Vat or Chemical Reduction vat, before galloping back out into the garden at high speed at about 2.45 to gather Persicaria Tinctoria ( the Japanese Polygonum Tinctoria). We gathered two armfuls of these stripped off the leaves then all five of us chopped away with scissors. I covered the leaves with water and acetic acid and then kneaded the leaves. We strained the leaves and then I kneaded the leaves again just as I would have kneaded bread and added the resulting liquid to the rest in the bucket. We stuffed in silk, and wools and even one hank of tencel before leaving it to go back to more dyeing indoors. Finally at nearly 4 o clock we found all our fibres in the Persicaria Tinctoria had turned a beautiful turquoise and everyone was pleased and excited (especialy me as this was only the fourth time I had used the fresh leaves to get turquoise with one failure.) Below is a silk cap on the left, handspun tencel yarn ( spun by Maureen) and Teeswater curls on the right.The photo below shows the bucket after dyeing which today has gone a deep blue with grains of stuff on the bottom which I assume is indigotin settling out.

This photo is of all the colours of day. The bright greens were golderod overdyed with indigotin from the woads

The pan below is the Persicaria Tinctoria vat today.

S

Felt Sketchbooks Burton Manor 3rd/4th May 2008

Felt Sketch Books

This workshop was run for the first time at Burton Manor 3rd 4thMay 2008.

This is the blurb which describes the workshop and the photos show some of the resulting work.
"During the workshop students will experiment with a wide variety of different feltmaking techniques to create complex and patterned surfaces in felt with layers of colour and texture, using naturally dyed wool and silk fibres, silk and cotton fabrics and linen and silk threads. These sheets of fine felt will then be stitched into a book. This workshop will be ideal for those wanting to learn felt making as well as those wanting to extend their knowledge of this versatile craft."

Packs for the weekend - I made 14 so there were plenty for the 8 students to choose form.

Students at workUsing part felts and layers of fibres to create

textured and multicoloured effects.

Translating a free form painting using Natural Dye Inks into felt
Detail needle felted into place.
Happy students at the end of two days hard work

Stitching into the surface