Eco-dyeing

Many, many moons ago I used to spin and dye my own wool with natural dyes, my aim was always to find the brightest colours possible. I've been a fan of India Flint over the past few years and have both of her books which I constantly read. Up until now I've never actually given it a go until Sunday, whenI discovered Jude, through Jacky. Jude lives all of ten minutes away from me. I joined Jacky, Dot and Nat in this fabulous process. I'm hooked, I feel like Jekyll and Hyde, I love all of the bright colours of India and Mexico, but am also rather partial to the more subdued colours of Japan and eco dyeing. Having said that I will really be pushing the natural colour range to the limits.

This is the result of my days work on beautiful old silk fabric.

not hard to guess which was my favourite dye bath - this was the purple cabbage

I also loved this one - Nat very generously brought along some fresh tumeric to share

some of the bundles after they were removed from the dye pots - ideally you would wait a few days to open them put patience isn't one of my virtues.

Jude and Nat in discussion

this is the remains of the cabbage providing a beautiful blue, jewelled hue in Jude's garden

my first unravelling

this is one of my favourite pieces

as is this, I wonder why - the lovely purple rings are from purple carrots that Nat very kindly shared with us.

surprisingly this is my favourite piece, I love the design that developed from an old rusty coil of Judes - the yellow is Nat's tumeric she shared with us.

Jude had some fabric we could use, this was a white top that I dyed in the tumeric bath. It's not very big but I'm going to remove the capped sleeves, open it up down the back and add a panel of dyed fabric, I also plan to add lots of stitching - one day.

I came home so inspired that I had to keep going, I produced this piece at home. I have a few more bundles waiting to be opened, I'm trying to be good and not peak.

I'm on a mission now, I collected flower heads from the garden and have frozen them ready to have a go at the ice-flower dyeing in India's book. I can see nothing will be safe in my garden now.

Thanks for visiting and all of your lovely comments.

I've also been felt making so will have photos in my next post.