Wildish Colour:
One of the things I love about natural dyes is that they are truly wild and the resulting shades are often a bit of a surprise. Everything about the life of the dyestuff influences the resulting colour; the weather that summer, the environment where it grew, the chemistry of the soil. The result is a truly unique shade every time you dye a piece of fabric or a skein of wool. I really love the dye process and its surprises, because this is what gives naturally dyed items their unique character and charm.
Natural dyes give wonderfully complex shades that always look good next to one another. This is due to optical colour mixing. The tiny dye molecules vary which give the colour a richness unrivaled by the molecules in synthetics which are all the same. Dyes can be layered through a technique called top dyeing, the two colours blend without being muddied which can result in intense shades.
A lot of the dyes used commercially are made synthetically from petroleum. Extracting oil, creating the dye, as well as the dye process associated with chemical dyes are harmful to the environment. The colour is the result of concentrated homogenous synthetic molecules from big factories.
My favourite dye methods are centred around gathering local dyestuffs in a responsible fashion. Instead of using chemical mordants I used pieces of reclaimed metals, or mordants obtained from natural sources which are not harmful to the dyer or the environment. Goldenrod is one of my personal favourites, it blooms here in abundance in august. It is often overlooked and thought of as a weed, I can only hope that finding a plant useful will add to it’s popularity.
I think they are beautiful growing up in the wildish places between the parking lots all a buzz with honey bees.
I’ll soon be uploading the photos of colours from indigenous dyestuffs, a list of excellent books (such as Craft of the Dyer by Karen Cassleman) and some tutorials!!!
