Category: Ecoprints and Natural Dyes

Posted in a collusion of ideas, embrilting, in progress, Natural Dyes, Suzanis

a gathering of intention

Posted on by arlee

I know some of you would rather see me posting photos of my embroidery, but please bear with me: summer is the best time for me to do my naturally dyed fabrics, for my own use and for my shop. The shop supports my handwork, so it does all eventually balance out 😆 I have a few scrap inspiration packs available now, and you’ll find them decent sizes to work with at a reasonable price- — *and* i tell you what #botanicaldye #plantdyes i use, unlike some listings elsewhere. This ensures that your purchase is something that is not going to fade, because i use only proven #naturaldyes , and that it is dyed correctly, according to historical use. I unfortunately see on Etsy especially, teeny weeny scraps being sold for outrageous prices with no indication of *what* “plant/botanical/vegetable dye is being used, so they don’t even know what they are buying! Some of it literally looks like old garbage scrounged stained bits you’d find by the train tracks. Not in my shop!

Anyhoo, i am starting to get back to some embroidery, in fact champing at the bit to. There are many too many UFO’s lying around here, all started with excitement, small things that should have/could have been finished by now, if i set myself a schedule. Time management the last couple of years (honestly) has not been a strong skill, or one much used!

I do however like to think of my excursions for stash building and the shop, as “reading breaks”, a time when colour can become important as the base for new work, or to jazz a jaded effort that went PLUNK.

Samara of course is important, but i also want to get back to more of the “suzani” style work. I really enjoyed this and the subsequent paring down of design.

This was the latest “start” of a suzani, untouched since the last week of June:

 

Not terribly exciting. But then i looked at the pieces of silk velvet recently dyed, and i start to drool:

And cottons too:

I *may* have to dis-assemble the start, and re-piece! I want to have the irregular shape the first one had (not exactly the same of course, but the general idea), a happy accident in sewing diamonds together, and to go larger as well.

The first one:

Now i’m off to do the “re-design” and piecing!

PS There are a couple of velvet scrap packs in the shop at the moment 🙂

Posted in Indigo Dreams, osage, quebracho rojo, tansy

down in my dreams

Posted on by arlee

Hues of blues and schemes of greens, silk velvet naturally dyed with osage, quebracho rojo or tansy and dipped in the magic of indigo. Leaves and deep ponds, skies and tears, oceans and mountain horizons.

“Deep greens and blues are the colors I choose
Won’t you let me go down in my dreams…”

Listing live tomorrow.   Listed now.       SOLD OUT

 

The Indigo Day Dye Inspectors are bored obviously.

Biscuits were handed out.

Posted in cutch, Days of Honey, indigo, madder, mordants and modifiers, Natural Dyes, osage, quebracho rojo, tansy

in soft fields

Posted on by arlee

Coming, coming, coming, soon i promise! Still fondling and sorting these silk velvets, trying to decide what colours should go together! Tell anyone who says “natural dyes are boring old browny beige blahs” that they are SO wrong I hope to get packs in the shop by Friday evening, and yes, these will be included in the current sale. There may even be some scrap packs of these! SEVEN PACKS NOW LISTED   SOLD OUT

Posted in Indigo Dreams, Natural Dyes, Probably talking to just myself, tansy

the greens of summer

Posted on by arlee

Above, that’s actually a photo from 2010. “There was a gigormous patch of it by the tracks so i headed there eagerly. Just as i got to the edge of the embankment, i heard a train and caught out of the corner of my eye one of the machines they use to keep track (narf) of the rails and trespassers, coming around the corner. Guess who was trespassing actually? Guess who fortunately (?) was so startled that she fell down the embankment into a tansy forest????? They never saw me, even backing up and looking while i flattened myself out on the ground down the edge. I felt guilty and silly at the same time, elated too 🙂 I snuck the camera out of my bag in case one tromped over and asked what the hell this middle aged frazzle haired freakwoman was doing lying on her face on CPR property in the weeds. Umm, taking pictures because i’m a botany specialist? HA! Got a BIG bag of tansy after they toodled back the way they came.”

As much as i love the results i’ve got with “traditional” natural dyes (ie the ones i have to buy, like madder–still waiting till the fall to harvest mine, indigo, cutch, osage, logwood etc), i love a good walk, with the DogFaced Girl of course :), to forage what i know are proven dye plants in my area.

My last big excursion with local plants for natural dye was a couple of years ago, and the results weren’t great. I was never sure if it was because the tansy was picked from a site that had previously been a (probably) highly contaminated ground for a gas station, or if it was just a bad year for colour. This year though there’s ACRES of the darn stuff, a highly invasive plant in the neighbourhood. I decided to try again, and my first excursion yielded the picking of 3.2 kilos (7.05lbs), barely a drop in the bucket even in my immediate area! I’ll be picking more, as there’s probably 1000 times that, no exaggeration, within the 3 block radius i pick in! It can be dried, but sometimes the shades are browner or weaker. That being said, it’s a good base to overdye with other colours: indigo for the most spectacular greens, madders for warmer yellow tones, or oranges and corals, and who knows what with quebracho rojo or cutch? I’ll be testing those as well.

When the flowers are gone, picked or naturally drying/dying on the plant, i can collect the leaves for greener yellows too.

I seriously upped the WOF this year as well, using twice the amount of plant matter per weight of cloth. YUM. This is YELLOW, a cool one, unlike the warmth of osage, but i do love the various shades with different yellow plants. When foraging locally too, the likelihood is that most plants are going to give yellows or greens, but post mods and other dyes can really extend the colour range. I can’t gather enough Solidago (Goldenrod), as the varieties that grow here are really mingy stunted little varieties. Ah, i miss the Ontario ones for colour, and beauty! (Not that i knew that when i lived there, oh so many many years ago…..)

So,

Amazing what one plant, some pre and post mods, and 1 overdye colour can do. Note: these are all silk velvet, with tests to come on cotton and silk habotai.

 

Posted in Home Cookin' the Cloth, journal: lessons to learn, mordants and modifiers

beautiful mistakes

Posted on by arlee

When chemistry has its own way.

I bet i couldn’t replicate this if i tried…..I had used this tannin bath already twice, and it was filtered water, but the tannin had started to oxidize, and it also showed me that either my filtered water system leaves some iron in, or that the original scouring had left a residual, BUT it’s the most gorgeous silver and fawn i’ve ever seen. The right side is actually the bottom edges, and the left is the middle where it was folded over a rod to hang to dry. The iron migrated then to the bottoms so it was still pretty “loose”.

I’m hoping that after a good rinse, it’s much the same. (Silk velvet)

Posted in cochineal, cutch, Madder, mordants and modifiers, Natural Dyes, osage, quebracho rojo

naturally dyed silk velvet

Posted on by arlee

I’ve had a love affair with velvet since i was 12 and found a Vogue magazine that advised “A pant of lavender panne velvet is the essential in a bohemian styled wardrobe.” I’m not sure *how* i thought my 60cent an hour babysitting jobs were going to finance the purchase of an $800 garment, but that was obviously beside the point (I’ve never forgotten that quote either…) Natural dyes coupled with silk velvet have me quite giddy at the moment. 😍

I just have to fire up the indigo pot, do some dye combinations and extend the colour range a bit more as we need greens, blues, purples, almost-blacks, different pinks!

Listings will start on July 5th, with 2 differently sized packs, and as always, i refund any extra shipping paid!

Posted in a collusion of ideas, Natural Dyes

germs

Posted on by arlee

I should be/am slowly working on Samara, but i keep returning to the ethnic embroideries of Central Asia.

What if i did this sort of thing:

with these?

Admittedly, silk velvet , *any* velvet is a bitch to sew, slipping, sliding and slithering everywhere but where it’s supposed to go, BUT. I have more patience now with my work, and intend to this all by hand, so maybe a lot of pinning and bulldog clipping?

Or mix with some of the other recent textured fabrics? Yup.

Perhaps some indigo again?

what shape will this one become?

 

Posted in cutch, Madder, Natural Dyes

richness

Posted on by arlee

Cutch and madder on silk velvet, MOAN. Can’t wait to work with these beauties! Admittedly i wanted the madder red on the velvet like the last few cotton results, but this deep rose is yumshy, wonderful with that foxy cutch!

Posted in cutch, journal: lessons to learn, Natural Dyes

cutchy cutchy coo, and fabric woes and lows

Posted on by arlee

Every dyer knows about walnuts for deep browns. Walnuts don’t grow in Alberta. I have some frozen ones still, sent by a generous friend in Ontario, and intend to dig them out, but needed some browns *now*.

Cutch yields chocolate, toffee, cinnamon, clove, mocha—mm, all delicious sounding 🙂 I’ve wanted to try it since i started noticing it in my “ethnic” embroidery research (India and the Mid/Central Asian regions), and for Mother’s Day, my darling son ordered me some (cutch extract) from Maiwa!

Cutch is a tannin and a dye, much like walnuts, quebracho rojo, or pomegranate. (Most of my fibres are previously mordanted though, as i like having them ready to go when the dyeing mood strikes. Pieces i want to overdye after the cutch, are already then tannined, in fact double tannined :).) I wasn’t impressed at first with the action in the dyepot, seeing a “nice” brown with distinctly pink overtones, but since it has to simmer for 2 hours, cool overnight, and there are many ways to shift the colour, i just let it be.

Recommended WOF being 20 to 50%, i used 30%. These fibres have been previously mordanted, with the exception of the lace far right.

I’d call most of these “mocha”, maybe even “mocha coral” :), vintagey, homey, warm and soft. The silk velvet obviously did the best at uptake, a rich foxy shade.

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

That cotton lace is a dense, heavily “woven” chunk.  And when i say “woven”, yes i am aware that lace is more a thread manipulating process than weaving. I’d love to see the machines that wind these threads into these patterns! BUT, yesterday when i took the darkest piece out in the sun to check the actual colour, WHOA!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yes, this is 100% cotton—except for the trapped fibres of plastic/synthetic in it: see the shiny bits, especially at left and top? Plastic is SO prevalent and polluting in our world, and we tend to take for granted that when we buy cotton, it will be uncontaminated by synthetics, but i’m guessing this place either makes synthetic laces as well, or fibres from plastic packaging of the original cotton getting trapped in the machine. Perhaps we should ask now for labels that say “made in a facility where nuts, gluten, what, soy and plastics are also used/manufactured….”

 

 

The newest “trend” in fabrics is abhorrent: hyberole and gimmick, targeting and misconception/deception are really heavy in these so called “organic” fabrics.  I don’t care if it’s made from rose petals/rose waste, white pine, eucalyptus, bamboo, oranges or frickin fairy wings; it’s viscose/rayon, a fibre made from MANY different cellulose fibres (all plants are cellulose!), and the process is shockingly chemical laden, severely toxic and horrendously polluting. If i put a random pile of rayon fabrics in front of you, you would not be able to tell what was made from rose petals, or rotten rare spotted himalayan feather orchids…..I find it quite disgusting any company calling these sustainable, organic, vegan or eco-conscious, and just as disturbing that uninformed buyers clear this stuff out like it’s made from gossamer wings and moonbeams.  I made the decision a long time ago to not buy or use rayon, as it’s nasty stuff period. There’s no such thing as “good quality” rayon, and even if there were, it ain’t coming in my studio!  Don’t fall for makers that tell you these products are leaving no toxic footprint, educate them, but don’t don’t don’t buy.