This year I am growing dye plants for the first time. I have fallen in love with making hand dyed, machine pieced, hand quilted quilts with natural fibres and natural dyes. My first natural dye quilt was made with cotton calico and I created colours for it with plants I foraged around the city, including in my favourite woods. You can read more about that quilt here.
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I finished my natural dye quilt at the weekend and took it to the woods for photographs. I’m so pleased with how it turned out and can’t wait to make another quilt with fabric I dye myself with plants. I have big plans for the coming year on the allotment, and plan to grow madder, woad, indigo, dyers chamomile, dyers coreopsis, black hollyhocks, and a few other things that can be used as dye plants. It’ll be really fun to have a wider range of dyes and colours than those I can find in the wild. I am particularly excited about having rich blues and greens, which are hard to create with wild plants.
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I think this acorn dye bath might be my most successful attempt at natural dyeing yet.
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My experiments with plant based natural dyeing continue, and today I’d like to share my results from dyeing cotton calico with willow branches and leaves. The results are subtle, and though I was frustrated to see the colour lighten so much after rinsing, I love the pastel pink and taupe shades that willow gives on cotton.
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I have been curious to try dyeing with plants for a while now, and finally got round to it. For my first dye pot I chose goldenrod (solidago canadensis) as it grows locally on wasteland. There’s plenty growing alongside the canal, and August is the month it blooms.
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