I finished module three of my course with the Wild Dyery. This one was about making print pastes with natural dyes and printing with them on fabric. Click on any of the photos to enlarge. Here is a photo of a sample with some of the colours:
We also made iron mordant paste and overdyed with yellow. I used osage orange to overdye in this case. The iron mordant paste became very dark. I would use less ferrous sulfate next time I do this.
Here's a photo of some gelli plate prints I made with the natural dye pastes. This is after they were steamed to set the colours:
Here's a photo of a screen print which I printed with a design I cut out of paper. The colour is a combination of madder and chlorophyl:
I created another smaller screenprint design and printed it on white cotton fabric and on a previously eco printed fabric. These are madder and chlorophyl, the final colours after steaming:
As an aside I've been experimenting with treating cotton with soy milk to increase its ability to accept natural colour. Cotton seems to have similar properties to a protein fibre after treating it with soy milk and leaving it to cure for a while. I had read about this but after I bought Rebecca Desnos' book Botanical Colour at your Fingertips I learned more. Up until now I've only been able to get grays from black beans on cotton. Here is a photo of some cotton and silk on the line after soy "mordanting" and using black beans and osage orange as a dye. I still had to use alum to get the deeper blue/purple from the black beans:
Thanks for having a look and hope you're enjoying some of your own natural dyeing experiments! Leave a comment below if you have any questions.
