Our native Galium, aka Cleavers or Common bedstraw, provides a surprising lush coral red.
Discover yourself through natural dyes Hey there, I’m Rebecca Desnos natural dye artist, author & educator I specialise in making colours from wild, foraged and homegrown plants. I’m a mother of three who lives in the south west of the UK. If you’re from elsewhere in the world, my methods and recipes will still work...
Unlocking the colours of a common urban flower.
Unlocking the colours of a common urban flower.
Testing out different mordants and post-dye dips with local acorns
Testing out different mordants and post-dye dips with local acorns
I never thought this day would come! I have been thinking of dyeing yarn at home for quite a while now, but kept putting it off and making excuses for myself. I don’t know WHAT happened but t…
Once upon a time, I had a favorite white sweater. It was a roll-neck pullover from J.Crew in soft cotton and cashmere. But favorite white sweaters tend to become careworn. Seams came undone. Stitches unraveled. Stains materialized. I used my tidiest skills to make physical repairs, but the faint yellow under the arms and a stubborn dot of a coffee stain on the chest meant that the white sweater never came out of the drawer for the past two years. It made me sad everytime I spied it, because I knew it had a lot of life left in it. What's a girl to do? Well, an idea came to me recently when we had to prune a branch off of our pecan tree. I plucked all the unripe pecans off of it and put them in one of my dyeing buckets. After snapping this photo, I bashed and bruised them with a wooden post (very cathartic, must say) and covered them with water to soak for a week. I washed the sweater to make sure that it was as clean as it could be. And then when I was finally ready to start the dyeing, I soaked it in cool water for about an hour to make sure that the fibers were fully saturated. Meanwhile, this is what had become of the soaking pecan hulls. The water had become a thickened, slightly frothy yellow-brown. Slow, fermenting soaks like this can have an "ick" factor. But I find them very earthy and satisfying, and so much easier than hot dyeing, when I have to haul heavy pots around on the stove. This just happens in buckets in a corner of my backyard. For cold dyeing, especially with plant fibers, you typically need a long soak. The wet sweater went into the strained dye liquor and stayed in for almost two days, with repeated airings (which I'll explain below). During the daytime, I'd move it around every few hours to try to make the dyeing more even. During the nighttime, though, it would stay in one spot for 10-12 hours, so that some spots ended up darker than others. If I'd really wanted it to be even, I would've removed it at night. But, well, I relish the wabi-sabi quality of the uneven dyeing (and in real life, the variation does seem a bit softer). The one thing I wish is that I had taken process photos of the dyeing. There is definitely something curious going on with the oxidation and pecan hull dye. Since I haven't seen anyone else write about it, you'll get my full description. The dye liquor was yellowish to start, and in the first couple of hours of dyeing, the sweater was taking on a light yellow-brown hue, except for the underarms, which were turning orangeish (probably due to the aluminum salts in deodorant, which were basically an inadvertent mordant!). It was hideous. I pulled the sweater out of the dyebath to reconsider, and while it was in the air, over the course of maybe an hour or so, the color of the sweater was transformed. It darkened, deepened, and became more reddish rather than yellowish. This was really a shock. I've dyed with dozens of natural dyes -- leaves, flowers, barks, and bugs -- and the only other one that you see this kind of real-time, color-changing oxidation process with is indigo, which is in its own category of natural dye because the chemistry is so different (basically, the pigment needs to be in a reduced and alkaline solution in order to be in a dissolved form that can adhere to the fiber. You carefully lower the fiber into the bath so that you don't introduce air, and then when you remove it, and the pigment hits the air and oxidizes, the fiber turns from greenish-yellow to blue). The process of repeated airings not only changed the color of the sweater, but over time it introduced a lot of air into the dyebath itself, and that became a darker reddish brown as well. It was fascinating. Wild and crazy times with natural dyeing!
This is one of the most exciting tutorials I’ve shared in a long time. I can’t wait to show you how I made this walnut printing ink! I was very kindly sent a beautiful handcarved fern stamp by Jessica from Jess Nicole Stamps, and I planned to make some kind of plant-based ink. Funnily enough,...
Interesting experiment I did yesterday, though probably not one that will end up in my book. It is interesting enough that I thought I shou...
I tried a new plant from the yard, and couldn’t believe the depth of color! This is from Texas Dandelion, Pyrrhopappus paucifloris. The really great thing about it, is that it grows on very …
Natural Dyeing Tips and tricks I have learned to make our natural dye projects more successful (great for beginners!)
Today I have a guest post for you written by Jule Kebelmann from Hey Mama Wolf. Jule shows us how to extract dye from plants and create a lake pigment, then use it to make our own paint. Use the paint on paper or to decorate walls. This is a beautiful way to bring the...
J’ai été en panne d’internet pendant presque 2 semaines, alors j’ai du changer quelque peu mon programme de travail! J’ai donc profité de ces jours où je ne pouvais travaill…
Today I have a guest post for you written by Jule Kebelmann from Hey Mama Wolf. Jule shows us how to extract dye from plants and create a lake pigment, then use it to make our own paint. Use the paint on paper or to decorate walls. This is a beautiful way to bring the...
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A few posts back, I shared with readers my stack of current books. One of them is by Jason Logan and is about making ink from plants he forages in the city, notably Toronto, NYC and Brooklyn. I fin…
Written by Elisabeth Culshaw I am a natural dyer and I love working with Indigo. It is such a special dye one has to feel grateful for. It takes so much time, patience, energy to produce 1kg of Indigo paste. The Indigo vat is a very special dye pot which creates beautiful blues. I always work with Natural Indigo and I
From Lewis’s December 1946 essay, “A Christmas Sermon for Pagans”: If the modern post-Christian view is wrong—and every day I find it harder to think it right—then there are three…
We love making our own seed envelopes to save seeds from our garden. They're so easy to make and are a great way to upcycle any paper that you already have laying around. The paper that we use to make crafts are usually ones that I've saved from packages that I receive, or scrap pieces
As I’ve mentioned countless times, Lindsay the Frugal Crafter is a genius and has saved me so much money! Here’s her brilliance for today: Make your own pigment inks. All my stamp stuf…
Low Impact Dyeing as a new way to create impressive green blues.
Elderberries and elderflowers come from the same tree; the elder or Sambucus. They aren’t grown commercially but are found in most hedgerows in Britain, distinctive due to the large clusters …
Discover how Coates Willow Charcoal is grown and created, using 200 years of experience and innovation by a enthusiastic family team.
This is one of the most exciting tutorials I’ve shared in a long time. I can’t wait to show you how I made this walnut printing ink! I was very kindly sent a beautiful handcarved fern stamp by Jessica from Jess Nicole Stamps, and I planned to make some kind of plant-based ink. Funnily enough,...
This post is about using seashells for paint. The first part will be about what I like to call “paint filler” and the second part is about using colored seashells for pigment. If you…
Introductory notes: The search for hidden colours, forms and textures is for me the lure of eco dyeing and eco printing, and a form of art. Eco dyeing and eco printing are essentially direct contac…
How to create perfect reds from madder
