Natural dye day

Perfect warm day for doing some natural dyeing - joined friend in the village who is expert both in growing dyestuff plants and in choosing suitable mordants. So after cutting up walnut leaves and stewing onions skins and other plant sources we ended up with 8 different colour pots. I used mainly silk, silk noil and cottons to put in the pots and ended up with a lovely selection of soft natural colours.

The fabric was mordanted with aluminium acetate escept for thre indigo dye which did not need mordanting.

Logwood and Madder root on the boil

Oak Gall and Onion skins stewing

Hanging out to dry

A very enjoyable day was had amongst good company - and result... lots of soft gentle colours on my fabric to use in various projects.

I do appreciate the subtlety of the colours you obtain with natural dyes but as a general rule find procion dye suits my work as I can gauge and predict the colour outcomes more reliably. However, the soft natural colours I ended up with today will I am sure, stimulate more design ideas for my work.