Dyeing fiber from nature can be full of surprises. I learned this while attending a natural dye workshop on Saturday taught by Dagmar Kloss. We used mostly plants but also flowers and insects. The repertoire included weld, osage, madder, fustic, logwood, cochineal and marigold. Yellows come mostly from woods and leaves, reds from roots and insects, and blues from fermented leaves.
After doing a value study with 3 different simmers in the dye we overdyed half of the skeins with indigo. We got some really gorgeous greens and near browns. What was interesting about using the indigo is that there should be a minimal amount of air in the dye pot for it to work. You can tell that it’s ripe for dying if it looks green. When you pull the skein from the dye pot it comes out green and when the air hits it, it turns blue.
We worked in teams and my team was privileged to work with the cochineal. This is not something for folks squeamish about insects. We ground the dried insects in a blender to a powder. They appeared grey going in but the powder was a beautiful red. Our fiber turned a bit purple, which Dagmar suggested came from having some iron in the water. It could have come from the pot we made the extract in or from the water that the fiber was mordanted in.
Now that I’m completely inspired to work with natural dyes I’ve begun collecting daylilies from my garden. No loss for the garden, I collect in the evening after the flowers have had their show and will be wilting overnight getting ready for the next day’s bloom.
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