Looking at the dye samples

One of the joys of natural dyeing is the unpredictability of the results. It's about

the only ironing job I like - ironing the dyed pieces after they have been rinsed and dried.

You can see the shibori indigo piece  in more detail below, a few lines of stitches were done on the machine with a long stitch setting before I drew up the threads tightly and put the piece in the indigo vat..

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.

Screenprinting the lilies

From my sketches of the lilies I cut a silk screen using a Gocco printer, ( A small japanese craft version of a Thermofax which will cut up to A5 size screens) the screen was then used to print with discharge paste on some hand dyed backgrounds. 

Quite pleased with the results as a first attempt.  The sketches therefore became white against the dyed background - not sure how I will use this in a piece  of work yet - who knows........

 I will probably try to screen with thickened dye next.