22
May
Flora’s Plant dye foraging workshop
Plants and trees that we can use in dye baths, with and without mordants (which make colours stronger) easily dye cotton, linen and silk.
Just a simple collection and boiling of plant matter, then simmering with fabric steeped.
Very bright yellow, or ocre yellow achieved with Alder plant matter, leaves and twigs. A pre process mordant is soya milk which the centre linen was soaked in. Its a little too bright for my taste so I would use without mordant.
The left lace is with nettle dyebath, a very subtle dark cream, with hint of yellow-green in reality.
Flora used same weight as fabric.
Left: Ahimsa silk, folded in triangles along folded strips, to create ‘resist’ non-dyed areas. Right: Habotai silk scrunched and rubber band tied, to create abstract, cosmic or marbled effect.
Either of these can be used as a background, to hand paint over with other colours; this is a technique I will explore in the future as preparation for silk painting designs. Flora’s workshop used plant based mordants (colour intensifiers) but metallic mordants would produce different shades.
Stripes achieved by folding fabric and using rubber bands to keep tight, preventing dye penetrating fabric.
Ahimsa silk folded and clamped to resist dye penetration, results in pattern.
Cotton lace rolled and 2 rubber bands used to achieve resist un-dyed stripes.
Flora’s workshops can be booked at her website: