Category: Ecoprints and Natural Dyes

Posted in FybreSpace the shop, Natural Dyes, Not so ordinaries

Shop announcement: SALE

Posted on by arlee

Art for C——-s for that special someone? 🙂 FybreSpace’s physical studio is in the midst of a move, but the online shop is still in the same place, right here!

Save 25% off ALL items (art and fabrics), with the amount refunded at time of shipping, along with *as always* any extra postage paid. (I have tried to add the discount code thingie to the online shop, but it’s not easy to understand, so it’s better this way 🙂 )

All fabrics, art and threads used are naturally dyed with accurate historical methods, no fugitive dyes anywhere!

PLEASE DO NOT ADD THIS LISTING TO YOUR CART: IT NEITHER GIVES THE DISCOUNT, NOR IS IT ANYTHING BUT AN ANNOUNCEMENT

Posted in Not so ordinaries, Probably talking to just myself, rhubarb root

uprooting

Posted on by arlee

Change is afoot. Big change, big afoot.

2.26 k of fresh rhubarb root, ready to be chopped and dried for winter dyeing. I still have probably 8k to dig but am hoping my big strong son can help with that next week before we have more than a dusting of S $#@ . Rhubarb root gives gorgeous metallic yellows to greeny golds through to corals and pinks depending on fibre type and mordants and modifiers use.

Roots coming up, roots going down.

Posted in in progress, Natural Dyes, Samara

a little Samara somethin’ somethin’

Posted on by arlee

Natural dyeing and hand embroidery are what keep me grounded, sane, functioning. Trying to stay focused while dealing with two sets of family, with two sets of issues that directly affect us, my own health changes, you know, Life (and Death…)……..But i have managed to at least finish the velvet hexes, and will start on the ones they replaced. Dyes are madder, quebracho rojo, osage, indigo, cutch, hexes silk, threads cotton.

Neither of us is getting enough sleep, though i’m trying to make sure we eat properly, especially the Greyman who’s appetite is bad at the best of times……

Posted in Alberta dye plants, natural dye research, Self Directed Workshops

local plant dye tests, Orach, part 2

Posted on by arlee

Nope. Not even going to bother with light fastness tests with these!

Funny that after half an hour, a test pull had strong colours (strong being relative, as these are not exactly strong 🙂 ):

After 34 hours:

And rinsed:

HA.

I wanted do an iron dip to see if there was any tannin, always a useful thing to know,but could do that only on the silks, as the cotton and linen pieces of course had been premordanted with tannin.

Though these are still wet, i can tell you the tannin in this plant is negligible. There are much better local plants if i do want tannin, like oak!

The dyepot also started fermenting after 24 hours, probably due to the freshness and any alien life forms that live on these. Because there are no other elements in these but orach and water though, i’m going to dump in my garden. (Edit: My neighbour was intensely curious what i was watering my patio pots with after–ALL of the deep pink was still in the water!)

I’ve realized too that many posts about local plants are going to bore you, even if a Die Hard Dyer, so will limit those to the end results, multiple plants per post. I know a lot of you have wandered off in the last year anyways!

Posted in Alberta dye plants, garden dye plants, journal: lessons to learn, natural dye research, Self Directed Workshops

local plant dye tests, Orach, part 1

Posted on by arlee

I’m taking several approaches here with foraged plants, so what works for me might not work for you, depending on where your plant material is growing, and it’s growth habits/requirements. There are many variables in natural dyeing, from that fact of plant biome, to water factors such as Ph, soft vs hard, city tap vs well, seasonal factors like heat, rain and soil composition and hell, just plain “luck of the draw” and magic. (Despite my crusty, abrupt, oft irked attitude, i DO love Nature and believe there IS magic afoot there.) There *are* actual credited dye plants in my area, but i’m also experimenting with either lesser known, or new to me possibilities.

Red Orach, introduced to the neighbourhood as a garden “green” by my immediate neighbour, is prolifically self seeding and will grow ANYWHERE, as i’ve found it everywhere from our lush back meadow, to the neighbour’s sterile little golf green lawn, the rough berm across the road, and down on the riverbank. (Our soil here is river sediment/clay based.) I initially thought it was in the Rumex family, but it is in fact Atriplex hortensis, part of the Amaranthaceae classification. And yes, i AM drawn to it by the very fact too that it is red–i *know* plants like this are full of anthocyanins, a fugitive colourant that neither lasts in light (or dark, and why would you keep beet/bean/berry/red cabbage stained cloth/es in the dark if the dye is that bad????) or through washing. But, maybe i’ll get a different yellow than the other mostly yellow colouring plants i intend to try? BWAHAHAHA. As i’ve said before, most “local” plants give a range of yellow, yellow, yellow or yellow……. But i *might* get pink, peach, coral with the right post mordant/modifier treatments, on different fibres. (This worked well, back in the day, with rhubarb root.)

 

 

I thought i’d do the first test with our filtered water, as our tap water is very very hard, and loaded with iron as well, and truthfully there are few dyes that do well in hard water. I’m also simmering, not boiling, as most dyes shouldn’t go above 180 degrees F/80 degrees C.  A total of maybe 600grams?

After 20 minutes, the water did start turning pink, no surprise actually, because this plant is used also for food colouring, and the neighbours noted their kids wouldn’t eat an omelette after the addition of the leaves turned the eggs pink…… 🙂 Reminds me of when i was a kid and the family was camping. Late one night, supper, only food left eggs and strawberries. Dad threw them together, result pink puke that no one would touch. Ah, memories.

At 40 minutes:

Simmered for an hour, then cooled for another hour, i then strained all the plant material out (and the bugs…..i did rinse everything first, but there were Klingons apparently.) Because these are an edible, they will go right into the compost bin in the back40.

I  leave the whole bath letting it cool on the burner, my usual method. In it, i threw premordanted according to fibre type pieces of silk velvet, silk habotai, cotton swiss dot and a tannined, but not yet alum treated linen. (I can post mordant that one.) There is a BIG caveat here: the colour you see in a dye pot, is not always what you get on the fibre! (That’s why too many artily staged IG photos are just plain fraudulent.) I will leave all of these chunks in the pot for 2 days, occasionally raising the temp to prevent mold and alien lifeforms, as normally this is how i dye, leaving the fibres in anywhere from 8-36 hours, depending on how busy i am or if i forget!). Too, protein and cellulose fibres should actually be dyed separately as protein is greedier and grabs more of the dye, so cellulose results may be weaker. Whatever. It’s a test.

This is half an hour in the pot, again not very indicative of what the end results will be, but interesting in terms of chemistry, just a pull to see if anything is happening. These are unsqueezed, unrinsed, so keep that in mind!

On the weekend, i will do some post mods and mords, then start lightfast tests. I don’t expect miracles, but the hoofies are crossed anyways, in the spirit of admiring Nature’s magic.

I am drying another 600 grams or so. If the above test doesn’t really work as a dye, well, the dried may be added to something else as a weak tannin, or slightly acid something or other. Or tossed 🙂

EDIT: AS you will see from my next post, Orach is NOT a good textile grade dye!

 

 

 

Posted in Alberta dye plants, Book reviews, natural dye research, Natural Dyes

gathering (sort of a book review too, “Spectrum: Dye Plants of Ontario”)

Posted on by arlee

Though i love my “Grand teints” ( classically proven dyes like madder, indigo, etc) natural dyes very much, and disdain the current trend of throwing any and all “food waste” materials in a pot to use as a “dye”, there are also the  lesser known dyes foraged locally by many cultures . (“Petit teints” are  the non fast/fugitive dyes such as red cabbage, most red/purple/pink/blue berries, most red/purple/pink/blue flowers, black beans, beets, etc.)

Yes, some *will* fade, some are rather anecdotal and some are still being promoted but are folklore with no actual extant or provable results, and there are some that while they may not last as long as the classics, they are still viable dyes.

To that end, i bought a copy of the much vaunted “Spectrum: Dye Plants of Ontario”, reasoning that much of what grows in Ontario, grows also where i am (Alberta), so that it’s worth exploring. I *do* want to use local plants, whether grown in my garden, or foraged on walks and day trips. I have an older book that is dedicated to Canadian dye plants, written in ’78, and at best a good laugh, and at worst very confusing if you don’t have any experience at all, but i’ve heard much good spoken of this Ontario volume. There’s also a classic book, out of print now, “Dyes from Lichens and Plants: A Canadian Dyer’s Guide” by Judy Waldner McGrath, 1977, which is more geocentric as it covers mostly plant materials above the 55th parallel! Even though Canada is so large and we do have some vastly different grow zones, many “weeds” flourish in all or most of our varied climes 🙂 Indeed, many of these plants may be in most of North America, at least the northern zones of the US.

 

There are 300 plants identified. I question some of them, though helpfully, some are referred to in other dye books, included in the bibliography for cross checking. (Again though, some still questionable….) I highly recommend again using a good clearly photographed plant ID book, as all illustrations are pen and ink drawings, better than the ’78 book mentioned above, but still, not drawn by qualified botanists…. (Forget the damn “plant app” nonsense–most of the results with those are too vague, and possibly dangerous if a poisonous hemlock is identified as Queen Anne’s Lace!)

Being so late in the year at this time, i will have to either immediately use what i find, or chance drying it and using it through the winter. Some dye stuffs locally foraged will not give as good results when dried : solidago is notorious for poor colour when stored, for instance, though tansy is just as good in my books dried as fresh. Too, let’s face it, most dye plants give yellow, yellow, yellow or yellow 🙂 Different mordants and/or modifiers may give different hues, and sometimes there’s a real difference between “commercial” dyes like osage overdyed with indigo as opposed to tansy overdyed with indigo, so it is still a valuable colour library.

There are no colour photos in this book, so though the results are described, perceptions may vary on the difference between “old gold” and “brassy gold”! Obviously if you’re interested enough in the potential of each plant, you’d do your own tests and quantify those descriptors with photos 🙂 Results are described with alum, chrome (A BIG BIG NO NON NO, mentioned IN the book now as a black hand (literally) over each entry), tin, copper and iron. CAVEAT: ALL FIBRES USED WERE WOOL.

So, my dried materials gathered this fall will be chosen firstly because i *know* people have had reasonable outcome with them , and secondly because they are in my immediate environs (few day trips left in the year now due to weather, season and work schedules).

  • Rumex Crispus –tested before with poor results, possibly due to season
  • Arctium minus –tested before with poor results due to small amount gathered
  • Artemisia –not sure which species we have, but there are several, and HIGHLY invasive/spreading
  • Equisetum –must be aware of where gathering as chemicals are heavily sprayed where i have gathered before
  • Tanacetum vulgaris and Solidago spp–used many times but still want to work with more
  • Cornus stolonifera–craploads by the river 🙂
  • Geranium maculatum—in my garden for years
  • Symphoricarpos albus var. laevigatus—who knew?
  • Malus–might as well use the leaves and bark from the broken apple tree–more good than taken away, chipped and sold to rich ladies who want “artisanal” mulch—– BWAHAHAHAAHHAHHA
  • Well, etc etc etc! (All Latin you notice: THAT is how you identify plants correctly with good plant ID books

 

PS There are also “stand by’s” in this book: coreopsis, dahlia, eupatorium, solidago, tansy, and more.

I have dried already some tansy, artemisia and yarrow. With the recent e-garbage run (old electronics), there’s plenty of room down in the Dye Dungeon now for storing dried materials in bags and boxes. All  tests, information, results will be in the “Alberta dye plants” category, though as i  mentioned, many of these are not as geocentric as just Alberta.

Off now to gather what from a distance looks a huge expanse of Rumex!

DogFaced Girl loves these expeditions, so no complaint there 🙂

 

 

 

 

 

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

sometimes a week has a lot of days to deal with

Posted on by arlee

 

The weight of the apples this year was too much. Picking before this happened would sadly have not prevented this: the big branches are thoroughly rotten inside where they “attached” to the tree…… And of course, this was the best year yet for the fruit. Golfball sized and rosy, they make an astonishingly deep pinkycoral sauce that needs no sweetener–but does necessitate hours of cutting up hundreds of them for a score of 3 litres of sauce.

The whole thing may have to come down, a very sad heartbreak. It’s 90 years old we bet, and if/when it’s gone, there will be no shade, no explosive mass of blossoms and bees, no woodpeckers or porcupines or deer visiting, and another part of this house’s history gone…..

There’s a new “baby” who has joined the family.

This is Sally, as sweet as her name. From the face, you’d think she was a grey tabby, but stretched out full, she’s a “torty” with tab markings. Sally belonged to my departed MIL, and it’s a good thing we rescued her when we did, the night before MIL passed away (Aug 30), because apparently after a death, only the executor of the estate is allowed to enter the home until everything has been inventoried. (We know they would have fed her, BUT they are still in a foreign country far away, and not back until Sunday night of this coming weekend! Try changing a whole family’s tickets for an early return–3times the price of the original airfare return!!!!!!!!!! She’s have been one very hungry and dehydrated kitty!)

We have wanted this girl for a long time. She lived under MIL’s bed for the most part as she was petrified anytime someone came in the house. We figured cleaning staff may be responsible for this and are so pleased, that while still skittish, she makes herself at home every night on my bed, with plenty of purrs, head butts and long luxurious stretches. She is HOME. Slapshot and Nessie are really not interested, except for the extra “Fud” being doled out 🙂 The family will blend well once again.

I am still trying to decide which natural dye i will use to transform the white swiss dotted cotton to the body of a dress.

I did two little tests (to the right) with quebracho rojo “leftovers”, the paler almost brown an exhausted bath, the pinker an alcohol extraction, less used. I’m leaning towards them with an overdye of tansy, to get the coral i want, but may slip some madder dips on some areas for a slight ombre effect.

I’ve also been working when i can on the new hexes for Samara.

They’ll replace the original ones cut from the background, which will also be embroidered this way and re-attached.

We’re just taking each day as it comes, slow, doing what we can as we can.

 

 

 

 

 

Posted in in progress, Natural Dyes, Samara, Suzanis

progress on second Suzani, and more importantly, Samara too!

Posted on by arlee

I’m trying to spend less time on line, and more in the studio….ha.

Samara’s body is almost done. Her wings are pretty much done, if not in execution, but in idea. (You know that one: in your mind it’s done because you know what you are going to do to finish that section, and can “see” it done 🙂 ). I decided to change up the hexes along the right side though: the recent naturally dyed velvets are perfect to tie in with the areas around the wings. I’ll still use the cotton “solids” that were originally slated for there, and treat the stitching the same way.

I added another greenblue thread as well:

Same type of stitch in think as “Original Truths” was done with; i do like that organic root/branch/path idea:

I was looking at older work photo files again, puzzling over how to treat that big area of red background, and found progress shots of “Strange Soul Take Flight” (2013), a continuation and expansion of the root idea:

I need more threads in the blue/green range as that is what’s going to tie it all together. I may combine some cutch or quebracho rojo with the tansy and indigo: i don’t want this idea to fight with the hexes.

 

Now known as “Harlequin”, i could also jog the suzani part into ‘soupzani”……… I threw a bit too much at it, but i’m just going to go with it. It’s joyful, it’s fun to work on, and what the hell: whose rules anyways?

 

I know already that the edges will be bound with indigo, whether in silk velvet or cotton, solid or eyelet (?)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

And the dress fabric from the previous post is now being mordanted 🙂

Posted in "OPINIONATION", Book reviews, natural dye research, Natural Dyes

“True Colors” book review (or how to make yourself even *more* unpopular)

Posted on by arlee

Firstly, i’m ambivalent, PERIOD, about posting this review. I realize it may have been a deeply personal choice of the editor/writer to make these particular inclusions in the book. I’m also rather curious how some have been given the title of “World Master” as well. But honestly? I wouldn’t recommend buying unless you’re one of those people who has to have *EVERY* book on a subject: borrow from the library when it gets there.  (Petition your library: they are always open to reasonable requests for aquisitions, and it’s still a sale for the writer/publisher.) It’s not that it’s expensive (it isn’t by a long shot) but you’d be better off with other more historically “slanted” books, like Dominique Cardon’s epistle, any of Yoshiko Wada’s beautiful offerings, Jenny Balfour-Paul’s indigo histories, and many museum guides online and sometimes available as catalogues.

So.

 

 

This is the first natural dye book i’ve ever been ambivalent about. On one hand, it’s exciting visually, a cornucopia of natural colour use around the world, illustrated gorgeously with close-ups and atmospheric scenes. Spotlights are on cultural meaning and history, empowerment of indigenous people, and the uses of ethno/geo-centric dye materials, in traditional and in cutting edge directions. The many facets of indigo are intriguing, and in some cases jaw dropping in the dedication to preservation of a skill, and in the use of aeons old techniques and materials for contemporary art applications in other media. The indigo sections in particular opened my heart to appreciate *all* the permutations of blue possible and to embrace the vagaries of the vat, finding beauty in the palest to darkest, no “wrong” blue as a result. The book should have been edited then and there, to be finished.

The reverse side of the coin however is the inclusion of erroneously labelled “sustainable” branded “dyers” who promote the use of food waste, fugitive dyes and the instant gratification element of DIY, with no actual historical data. This isn’t a recipe book by a long shot, but i would have expected a disclaimer by some, (even one!) of these currently Popular Girls, about dyes that last, are done correctly with proper mordanting, with light and wash fast tests, instead of “seasonal colour” that essentially wastes more resources by the very fact that they have to be redyed over and over to have colour. I feel that these chapters are puff pieces only, designed to fill the book, with no actual value added, but since there are only a couple of these artistes included, there is a small blessing in that.

As i said, this isn’t a recipe book by a long shot, and was never intended to be, but in giving the title “World Masters” to some of the included artists, it cheapens the whole field, promotes bad practice, and encourages questionable business models. It’s unfortunate that the classic dyers, innovative artists and contemporary uses will be glossed over by many in favour of the easy to do fugitive. A coffee table book, and it may pique some interest in those who intend to get serious, but in the end, not a reference book, not destined to become a classic, and not very useful for the most part, except perhaps as a “Digest”.

 

Unfortunately, or funnily, or strangely even, i cannot post this review on Amazon, because the book hasn’t been “released” yet. Really? I got my copy 2 days ago!

You’ll note too that i actually was rather mild in my condemnation for fugitive dyes, and mentioned no names 🙂 These ARE *MY* personal opinions, and whilst many think i’m a Know It All, i have never steered anyone wrong, deliberately or otherwise, with information i have shared. “The facts, Ma’am, just the facts.”