Category: Natural Dyes

Posted in embrilting, journal: lessons to learn, Moons, Natural Dyes

a year of dyeing moons

Posted on by arlee

embroidered moons, natural dye, arlee barr, hand embroideryAll natural dyes, cloth and threads 🙂 (Exception, first two moons top left.)

I think it was 2015 when i bemoaned that i would never have a good assortment of naturally dyed deep rich colours in my threads. HA. Though i had been using natural dyes for a while, something wasn’t working. I kept trying though, sometimes having success, sometimes horrendous fails. What was wrong? So, i diligently re-read the books, taking notes in minutiae, going through each step consciously, and WOWZERS, suddenly things worked. When in doubt, “read the instruction manual”! BUT, read the whole thing, read it in order, don’t just jump to the recipes. I highly recommend any of Jenny Dean’s books, Maiwa’s instructions, J. Liles, Domonique Cardon and the like.

I learned about scouring: just because something is white/new doesn’t mean it’s clean. Most fibres have dirt, dust, wax, pectin, chemicals, oils and who knows what from the initial gathering and processing, the manufacturing whether cloth or thread, the handling, transportation, storage and packaging. (Even PFD fabrics can be suspect.) I was shocked to see the colour of the water from the freshly bought, new, tightly packaged white thread, and how much particulate was in it after a good thrashing with soda ash and soap in boiling (or almost boiling, depending on the fibre type) water! Brown! Yellow!! Pink!!?????

I learned about mordanting, proper mordanting. According to fibre type, according to what was actually a mordant (NO vinegar, salt, soy products), according to correct WOF use, according to historical use and extant samples. (I chortle now when i see the so-called “vivid” colours on soy mordanted fabrics…………the uptake is uneven on most fibres, gives predominantly pale to medium shades and i wonder about the lightfastnessness, especially since no one seems to show actual tests!)

I learned about WOF, the correct amount of dye in ratio to the weight of the fibre being dyed. Dumping a tablespoon of dye and seeing a dark colour in the pot doesn’t mean that’s what you’re going to get on the fibre. And there was clear information being offered about the correct WOF for each type of dye, as they are not all the same.

I learned what an actual natural dye is. The hollyhock blooms, the hibiscus all went into the compost heap, the avocados kept as a tannin only. Lovely colours, but fugitive, no matter how mordanted. Not wasting my efforts, resources, time. (Yes, there are still natural dyes that aren’t as light or wash fast, but most can be coaxed with proper mordanting and/or post modifying.)

I learned about the effects of different mordants and pre or post modifying, about combining dyes and/or overdyeing, giving me an even more extensive array of colours and shades.

I learned about light and wash fastness. Oh boy, did i learn. The compost bin has thanked me on a few occasions.

The biggest thing i realized was TIME. With the exception of indigo, nothing comes out of my pots until it’s been in at least 8 hours, and often a day or two. It’s not instant gratification, nor a case of sitting and watching the pot boil, bemoaning “wasted” hours 🙂 Like making homemade bread, most of the work is already done, and “waiting” can be either relaxing or productively spent elsewhere!

All of this has taught me patience this year, and while it’s still not a Perfect State for me, i’m getting there. I can turn away from the aggravating, the frustrating, those who “persist in their own stupidity” (as my Dear Mother says), and the willfully ignorant.

 

Mostly. I’m only human after all. Just trying to get better at it.

 

 

 

Posted in Days of Honey, FybreSpace the shop, Moons, Natural Dyes

on a roll

Posted on by arlee

round and round i go, with ideas abundant, colours singing, and natural dyes that sing sing sing

these mini moons are not only an antidote to blue days, SAD and the Black Dog, they are fun to create!

 

Happy Solstice to you all!

 

EDIT: PS:

Sad. I’m sad that someone would email me and tell me i’m obsessing about my little moons. Damn right i am–i’m not depressed, i’m not angry, i look forward to getting up in the morning, i’m loving colour, i’m working in my studio EVERY day, i am doing what i need to. We all need to find what makes us happy, productive, engaged and feeling positive!

So, now i am NOT SAD myself

Posted in embrilting, journal: lessons to learn, Moons, Natural Dyes

using again

Posted on by arlee

Stash, i’m using stash! Whadja think i meant? 🙂

On Sunday when i was (re)organizing the work space, i had a brilliant thought. Why not USE some of the natural dyes? Seriously, wth am i making them for otherwise? Pretty piles are one thing, unused pretty piles are another 🙂

I am stressed right now though, overly stressed actually, for reasons i won’t go into publicly, but keeping my hands and mind busy are a good antidote. That and long long wintry walks with the DogFaced Girl (Brown Dog), trying to gather my thoughts, and lock the doors against the Black Dog…………..

So. Small projects. Things i can finish if not in a day, maybe two or three. I have a resentment about making “things” that won’t see the light of day, are unappreciated, or that serve no purpose (gone are my days of filling the studio with tchotchkes based on magazine articles…), but these, these i like. Gifts, a thoughtful concentrated mark of time, hopeful colourful little bits that might mean something to someone.

When the light is better later today, i’ll rephotograph these, and list them in the shop (with an addended photo here too, so you can see them as they really are.). Through December, they’ll be on sale. Maybe they will cheer you, or a friend.

 

Posted in Natural Dyes, Probably talking to just myself, quebracho rojo

the dye that keeps on giving, Quebracho Rojo

Posted on by arlee

My previous results with a fresh pot were in the pink and purple range.

This dye/tannin was definitely worth the expense. I’ve had a pot sitting for two weeks in the back room, where it’s quite cold in the winter. No mold grew, no funny smells, no questionable sludge, so i decided to throw a few odd bits in to see what colours i’d end up with. (I know there’s still a lot of colour in the pot, as an experienced eye can tell when a pot is exhausted and when there’s still dye stuff left.)

A few scrappy bits of sheer silk chiffon from 8 years ago (the original hollyhock had completely faded: no mordant!), i love the purple/pink cast to this brown. The cotton lace was a surprise as well. (Note none of these were premordanted, in this case because QR is also a tannin, which can be a mordant. Normally i would have premordanted, even old scraps.)

Since most of the cottons i had done before were not terribly exciting with the QR, this bodes well.

 

The gold in the photo below, to the right, was an errant piece of previously ecoprinted POLYESTER, that had snuck into the pot long ago. GOLD? All right!

But that deep reddish brown on the osage (yellow) silk velvet–OOOOOOOOOOOOO!

So, the Quebracho Rojo has gone from giving striking pinks and purples to rich warm browns., money well spent.

Posted in "OPINIONATION", Natural Dyes

I’m going to burn in hell

Posted on by arlee

If you don’t give a flying youknowwhat about natural dyeing, move on, friend.

Beets, beans, olives, mint, spinach, blackberries,  carrots, cherries, raspberries, red cabbage,. Yum, but not dyes. Really. They are not dyes. Even so called “reputable”, “popular” authors are buggering about now with these. PLEASE please please PLEASE, if you must include these in your book, make sure it is OBVIOUS that these are fugitive/bad/stains only/pointless for using on fabric. Maybe write a book on how to dye Easter eggs instead. Or salt and flour playdough for kids.

However.

I’m not aware of any field of craft anywhere else as “natural dyeing” that advocates the use of bad practice as “play”. Since so many espouse “ecological awareness and sustainability”, how does that balance with the waste of time, resources (water and electricity), materials (cloth and thread) and plant materials? Granted some of these plant materials *are* “waste”, but they’d be better in your compost then, so that you could then grow healthy plants that *do* actually dye. The approach too that “if it fades, it can still be pretty, or dyed again” does no service to the natural dyers who pride themselves on products done well to begin with, that do not need overdyeing after a month, and who have customers who spending their money, expect a little more than “well, i can re-do it when that purple turns to washed out beige”.  (Assuming the customer is able to get the product back to them, WANTS to get it back to them, and then can pick it up again….AND are you going to charge them for the re-dye???? Really?) And is that customer going to trust that the product WILL last this time? Even if you are not selling the item, how many times has the family member/friend worn that spinach dyed toque? Or have they “donated” it to the local charity, or tossed it in a garbage bag going to the landfill, saying “oh so sorry, i lost it”? MORE waste.

When learning to play with different mordants and modifiers, why not use an accredited dye that will actually teach you something about natural dyeing? Just because mint/blackberries/beets react with these chemicals, doesn’t mean a real dye is going to act the same way. Just because a plant is “readily available” does not make it a dye plant. Where is the historically relevant data, where are the extant samples, the light and colour fastness tests results? Artfully staged photos are not “proof”.

Because you can bet if i styled a cantaloupe with some coral silk, or an eggplant with artistically draped purple wool gauze, someone would automatically wax rhapsodic about the beauty and depth of colour, and accept it at face value… I’ve seen it too many times on FB, Instagram and on blogs. Liars.

The claim that natural dyes are “expensive” is specious as well. At the very least, many reputable dye houses sell mixed packs that can give even a novice good results. There’s a system of Cost per Wear, that says if i buy a dress for 200 and wear it once, it cost me 200 that is now gone: if i wear that dress 20 times, it cost me 10 per wear, and i didn’t have to buy a dress to replace it. If i use water, electricity, cloth and beets (for $10 for enough to “dye” with), and the colour washes/fades out, i now add the cost of the water, the electricity, the cloth, the time and the damn beets and it probably comes out to more than 10, that is now GONE. AND i have to redye it or the cloth itself is now wasted. This is “sustainable? This is ecologically responsible?

Is this the “if it’s on the internet, it must be true” mentality? Books can be as bad for information, given the spate of vanity/self publishing now, or from publishers/editors who really don’t know the field, and who don’t care as long as the book sells. Even authors with years of experience and actual research will advise that something didn’t work after all, that the information was erroneous to begin with. (Jenny Dean admits hollyhocks do NOT work as a supportable dye.) And if you’re going to teach, or are avid about less waste, and more responsibility in the textile field, why not promote something that does last, that is proven to be viable. The number of books a person publishes, or what position she/he holds has nothing to do with veracity. (Look at Dr Oz……….) Obviously too, “facts” can be tailored for books, not presenting the whole picture.

We have this little Cult of Personality too, where no one is willing to speak up, to give honest opinions, to present true facts. This means the book/blog/website/class/workshop is free to promulgate more disinformation/folklore/slanted views, and now it’s the Bible, and if you disagree, you are a heretic.

Burn baby, burn. Guess that’s me.

And there’s a new post too about this 🙂
Posted in embrilting, FybreSpace the shop, in progress, Natural Dyes, Naturally dyed threads, quebracho rojo, Samara

OOOOyeah, and shop update

Posted on by arlee

After auditioning fabrics for the areas behind the wings, i was inspired enough to finish the second one in two days. Admittedly smaller, but the idea of the velvet really got me going! The first one is finished and attached to its backing.

OMG i love this.

Because the velvet itself is so tactile, and the colouring from the osage and quebracho rojo so gorgeous, i decided to keep the stitch there as simple as possible. No point in hiding all that beauty! This velvet, though lush as silk velvet is, was easy enough to do without having to lay any stabilizer to stitch over, but the stitches still had to be solid enough not to sink in, so i stuck to a whipped backstitch–i love the line effect of this on any fabric.

And Borgles. Gotta have Borgles, one of the FrankenStitch mainstays. Picking one out to redo though, and have to add one more small one.

Thought i’d share my results too with the Quebracho Rojo: obviously not a winner for saturation on cotton (cellulose), but it sure is on silk (protein)!  The description on the website is a bit confusing, i think: “Quebracho is suitable for dyeing cellulose fibers and also performs well on silks and wool, and yields a lovely pinkish peach to brown rose color.” It’s obvious that the silk is INCREDIBLE, and look at those distinctly explicitly PINK shades! Wasn’t impressed with the uptake on the wool (first photo left top), but perhaps it was the pomegranate it had been premordanted with…. However, some post modifying, and some overdyeing with osage did give me a wonderful range of colours.

Do i know what i’m doing with natural dyes? I do, confidently, correctly from first step to last.

And i am willing to share the current silk velvet bounty 🙂 Small packs in the shop! You’ll LOVE Making with it, stitching on it, fondling it!

Posted in embrilting, in progress, Natural Dyes, Samara

winging it

Posted on by arlee

Because this is a large work, it’s a bit problematic sometimes to work AS a large piece: you have to shuffle around the whole thing, pinning it into folds so you can have access to the area you’re working on, making sure you don’t stitch one section to another, or to your pants, dragging cat and dog hair into the mix, and having room to manouevre it. On the other hand, cut up like this (because i wanted different effects with the natural dyes for each area), it flops around loosely, and the tension is hard to maintain.

This means both wings and the figure have to be finished, and then attached to the backing fabric they’re going on, and then *that* has to be attached to the rest of the floppy piece. I auditioned several fabrics to be the backing fabric, and because none are big enough for the whole area behind the wings and the figure–and i didn’t want all the sections that show to be the same anyways, i’ll have to do more stitching on those thin visible slices as well, to “blend” the joins. EDIT: i just realized i can back the wings and figure as one piece, work the “background” large area, THEN attach all the parts together.

I auditioned several fabrics: Indigo–WHOA, lovely but too bright–and i don’t have enough for both wings, even pieced behind where you can’t see the joins. It also wastes this indigo piece, as most of the patterning on it would be hidden. If i was going to use indigo then, i would have chosen a more solid dye job.

 

“Filler” cloth, deliberately designed for backgrounds or  for “fussy cutting”. Nope. Motifs too small, too scattered, too much white.

Rust, maybe too “linear”, too “white”.

Velvets naturally dyed in the last week. Too much?

Nope, as in NOT “too much”, YES as in WOW. Admittedly since dyeing these velvets, i’ve been aching to use them, but honestly i do think this really warms up the whole piece.

Though this is very haphazardly pinned on my design wall, i can really see where she’s going now. Warmer coloured threads for the paler surround are now a possibility also.

It’s been worth the 2+ years to get her going!!!!!!