This photo looks so luscious and creamy. It is white silk fabric and cream silk/cotton fabric soaking in water in preparation for the dye pot.
Leaves from a blue gum and red onion skins rescued from the dye pot – all wrapped up tightly and tossed into the remnants of the red onion skin dye pot.
The marks obtained on the silk/cotton fabric – looks even better in the flesh.
DEFINITIONS
“SPACE DYEING is a technique used to give yarn a unique, multi-colored effect. While a typical skein of yarn is the same color throughout, a skein of space dyed yarn is two or more different colors that typically repeat themselves throughout the length of the yarn.”
“A ROVING is a piece of fibre which has been combed, drawn into a clump, and then twisted slightly to hold the fibers together and to prepare them for spinning and/or felting. SLIVER and TOP have a similar meaning to rovings.”
After confessing to Jude about taking a tiny piece of her space dyed roving ( and spinning it ) I received a slight dressing down, and then she agreed to try and replicate the same colours in some of the commercially spun alpaca fibre.
The end result of the furtive spinning of pilfered roving. A tiny piece of roving goes a long way.
Judy, the master dyer at TAFE, at work.
The alpaca yarn soaking in hot water.
The first addition – black.
The second addition – red.
The third addition – yellow.
Just a slight stir to meld the colours.
Let it simmer gently until the water runs clear which means all the dye has been attached to the fibres.
Almost the end result. It was decided that it needed a bit more oomph so it was returned to the pot with a little more black dye.
Still to take the photograph of the finished product.
I tried lemon scented gum leaves for the second time with the thought that I may have failed the first time, but alas no…will use for over dyeing in the future.
Hate to admit it but this looks somewhat better than in real life.
As with all of the silk fabric in this post I placed it into a pot that had been sitting with soggy blue gum leaves for a long time, thinking I would get a rich colour but alas no…I must have exhausted the dye from the previous dyeing session.
In a few places you can just see where I used banksia leaves as a resist and used my favourite – red onion skins. I believe the really bright splotches came from the juicy red onion layer beneath the actual skin layers. Job to do – confirm this.
This piece was also wrapped around a tin. Not sure how the black colour happened.
This piece had been dyed before but was fairly insipid so I threw it in for a second go. I had placed moldy unknown leaves on it that had been stored in a plastic bag, and tied it into a parcel.
Tulips (dried out) and kangaroo paw, wrapped around an iron bolt and placed into a separate container in the pot. Nothing to write home about.
My favourite. This one saved me from despondency. And it was the most straightforward – an insipid result from a previous session, screwed roughly around a rusty piece of iron.
Had to add this image. When I started photographing the silk I hung it in front of a window. The blue and green are sky and grass. Would be great if it was the real thing but alas no…
Which translates into leaf prints and dyeing from nature.
It is truly amazing how a new branding can completely change a person’s concept about an activity that has been in existence for centuries and very clever of those people who do the re-inventing.
I am so enjoying collecting foliage, wrapping it up into felted or fabric bundles, throwing foliage and bundles into an old pot and seeing what happens. It is such a restorative pastime. And it even smells glorious.
Into these pots I put blue gum from my mother’s property. In the back pot I also added a rod of copper to see if there would be any difference in the colours obtained. There wasn’t.
Into this pail I put some cotton and soaked it in milk overnight and hung it out to dry before dyeing it. I would really like to be able to produce vibrant colours on cotton. Silk is gorgeous but not quite as functional as cotton.
I also tried a kangaroo paw that I have growing in a pot.
The kangaroo paw left the marks on the left of the photo and bloody hell, I can’t remember what made the leaf marks on the right. I am going to have to be a lot more rigorous with my record keeping.
I love making pre-felts and can’t wait to put all my pieces together and felt into one large piece. Knowing me though, this will be a long process.
Brilliant markings from blue gum and it’s buds.
Below is the markings from Bushy Yates – my favourite piece of fabric so far.
This is the cotton I soaked in milk. I wrapped it around red onion skins and bloody hell, can’t remember what else. I am getting very weird looks from the checkout chicks when I hold up my bag of onion skins for them to check. But I’m really liking the deep purples they produce.
Not sure but maybe lemon scented eucalypt.
Not sure but the orange print is probably Bushy Yates. Definitely need to take better records.
A gratuitous picture from Granny.
I had a wonderful five days at the workshop organised by SouthWest TAFE and led by India Flint – learning how to colour cloth with ecologically sustainable dyes from plants.
India is a r(eco)fashion designer, writer, feltmaker, cloth colourist & costumiere.
Jill was there.
Rocky and Sue also.
And Judy as well. Judy teaches textile subjects at SouthWest TAFE.
We went in search of plants. We felted. We experimented. We watched pots boil. We got excited about opening bundles of cloth.
India Flint
A small selection of our resulting work.
Admiring a completed “landskin” by India.
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It gave me the idea to do some felting CONTAINING this lily image, well, an approximation of it anyway.
Next step - machine embroidery - another new skill I am just getting to know.
Yep, the leaves look a bit odd, but it is EXPERIMENTAL textiles and I am having so much fun experimenting.
And here is another piece I added to my samples folder for the CONTAIN subject, which is basically drawing pictures with the sewing machine. I hope I've got enough life left for all the ideas I have swimming around in my head.
I then folded the other half of the stabiliser over the top. Off to the sewing machine and this is when the problem solving had to be called upon. Through trial and error I worked out to lower the feed dog, use a ballpoint needle to help stop snags, change the foot to a darning foot (this made the most difference) and have stitch size at zero. I'm sure there are many other things I should know about this process. All advice welcome.
And after an iron, this is the final result. It has resulted in a delicate fabric which I like. Actually I really like how it has turned out. The image doesn't do it justice. I made lots of mistakes throughout the process but I learnt a bit too. The next one will be better.
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