Rowena Dugdale
@redrubyrose_
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Flora inspired small-batch textiles, plant-dyeing and landscape wanderings
Gairloch, Scotland
Joined January 2009
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Plant dyes - all the colours achievable from leaf, flower and root within around a five mile radius. The red hot poker root was a gift from a friend on Skye but that’s only several miles across the water…
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The first time I used weld flower as a plant dye it astonished me. It is stable, lightfast, washfast and has a depth of colour so intense that my dreams were luminescent. Synthetic yellows can sometimes be a little sickly. Weld has depth.
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Linen colours from plants that I’ve dyed over the last few months 🌿
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Here’s the dry silk from yesterday’s indigo leaf dye sesh. It’s pretty much my dream colour. From seeds planted at the end of June.
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No ordinary shirt. Allan Brown’s incredible project is complete. He took wild nettle, flax & hemp, which he hand processed, spun, plant-dyed, wove & stitched. The buttons were made from apple branches.
"it’s a shirt and it fits and it feels amazing!"
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Indigo, a myriad of blues. From the classic colour on the right to subtle teals and sea-greens. A mix of dye extracted from fresh leaf and powdered indigo. The greens are over-dyed with bog myrtle and heather. Linen & silk.
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Linen patchwork dyed with hawthorn leaves, gorse, acorn and weld, with printed elements. One from a couple of summers ago.
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Anna Kjellander is knitting a beauty, created with 71 shades of mushroom dyed yarn. Wow!
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From the dusty russet reds of madder through to sunshine gorse flower, orange willow, the mercurial and fleeting green reed flower to indigo and logwood. A spectrum of plant-dyes.
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Working with fabric is ephemeral, unlike ceramics or jewellery. So, these fragments of iron age textiles are as startling as they are beautiful. From the salt mines at Hallstatt, Austria.
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Lovely custom order complete, lots of velvet mosses, twiggery and flora. Customised with plant-dyed silk linings.
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Mushroom dyed wool threads by Anna Kjellander. Colours from twelve different species near her home. Wow!
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Mushroom and lichen dyes, beautiful results from a Mycopigments workshop at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington.
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These socks are dyed with an array of mushrooms and I love them. Hand knitted by Siri Larsen of Montana Woolworks. Over on IG, Siri says that at first the individual dye-pot colours were disappointing to her but then she put all the yarns together. Delicious!
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Layering colours. Linen mordanted with oak gall and aluminium acetate. Yellow from bog myrtle to start and then indigo and iron dips. Indigo doesn’t react with mordants or iron but bog myrtle does. The inky indigos with oak gall + iron are a happy combo for me.
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I’ve been dyeing with madder (Rubia tinctoria). The roots are one of the oldest known dyes and they can dye a range of warmer shades from pink and coral through to deep red and purple. 1/2
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These dyed colours are all grown or foraged by Emma Kylmälä. They include weld, indigo, cosmos, madder, walnut leaves, eucalyptus, goldenrod and bog myrtle. Beauties!
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@JeanetteHall9
@planetearthx2
Of course they wouldn’t have, because this pic has been lifted from my page out of context without credit, and with the glib ‘mediaeval’ tag.
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This beauty is by Ukrainian born textile artist Larysa Bernhardt. “I source fabrics all over the world and when they come, sometimes smelling of coffee and spices, sometimes of old books and lavender, well, I know there’s a story.”
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If only I could knit. These bundles of beauty by Annie Cadden are naturally dyed with walnut leaves, barberry/indigo, indigo, mushroom/indigo, indigo, sumac, lichen, walnut & yarrow.
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Back in the 1990s on my textile degree there was no discussion of plant-based dyes. Meanwhile down in Brighton my friend Sally (who I was yet to meet) was kicking convention with her MA in plant dyes. This week I saw her notebooks. Fresh as a daisy over 30 years later.
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Snow capped Torridon hills this week. I love the light when the northerly winds are here, it flattens and the sea and sparkles the mountains.
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A few recently dyed plant colours. Locally gathered, apart from the blues from logwood chips. Oranges from heather, yellows from weld / meadowsweet and green from reed flowers. Cotton + linen, mordant - mostly aluminium acetate.
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Iris root. Nearly clear in the dye bath but packed full of tannins so gives shades of blue/grey with an iron bath. Joyful colour!
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Iris root on linen. It dries lighter grey but still a great colour.
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This colour circle of naturally dyed yarns were dyed in 1970 and still look vibrant today, over fifty years later. They include madder, indigo, cochineal and weld. Part of a collection from Denmark’s Teaching High School via
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Eggs dyed with edible plantstuffs. Including onion skins, turmeric, red cabbage and nettles. By Swedish natural dyer and knitter Anna Kjellander.
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Tablet weaving is a traditional Norwegian textile technique that doesn’t require a loom. Wool dyed with St. John's wort, lady's mantle and umbilicaria lichen. Created by Lucia Andalova.
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Beautiful light on Harris yesterday, captured by rutha.hamilton over on instagram. She went for a swim as rain bounced off the waves. Wow!
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My plant-dyeing buddy Emma Kylmala lives in London and says the the weld growing wild in verges and scrub around her neighbourhood is especially prolific this year. She’s dyeing it as fast as she can. Weld dyes the brightest and most lightfast yellows.
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Walnuts. Wishing there were a few trees growing nearby. These colours are beautiful by Emma Kylmala. Walnuts are full of tannins and don’t need a pre-mordant.
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Gorse dye, and the difference between flower and stem. Picking the petals really is worth the faff (top colour). The stems release tannins which dull the colour. (Fabrics mordanted with oak gall and aluminium acetate).
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Stitchwort, fly agaric, fern, bergenia, forget-me not. Just finished up this new small batch of kisslock purses.
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Madder root on linen and silk. Samples from the slow cooker dye pot this week. The deepest red is linen mordanted with oak gall and aluminium acetate. All the others are un-mordanted.
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I’ve been following the progress of this amazing fabric and it is now off the loom!
Allan Brown created it from locally grown nettle, flax & hemp. It is hand processed, hand spun and plant dyed. Woven on a 4-shaft floor loom.
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Oak galls. Formed by parasitic wasps laying larvae on the buds. Galls are rich in tannins and have been used for ink / dyeing for millennia. I use them to mordant linen, to mute the colour of digital linen print + with iron salts to create soft greys. Always a treat to find them.
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Indigo leaf on silk. I’ve been using them for purse and bag linings this week and they are a sensory reminder of summer. These fabrics hold their memories.
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In progress. Snippets of meadowsweet, indigo, madder, iris root, reed flower and gorse.
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Direct print of an indigo leaf. Picked earlier, briefly popped in the freezer and then hammered onto fabric. I’ll leave it in a bright windowsill to see how it develops or fades.
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A snowbow this morning. Dusting of the white stuff to sea level, more on the way.
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A wide range of colour results from fresh madder root. Classic red to burnt orange, chestnut and pink. Achieved through a combination of dye strength, PH tweaks, fabric choice and base colour- some of the greener tones were overdyed nettle + iron.
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Naturally dyed yarn, wound onto card strips. These are left over samples that Jacqui Symons has collected from her workshops and dye tests. Such a beautiful way to see the subtle hues of the different yarns.
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A good drying day. Madder and bog myrtle on the line.
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Results from the fresh indigo leaf + salt. Light blue-green colours on silk which I actually prefer to vat blue indigo. Looking at the plants in the polytunnel I think there will be enough leaf for a couple of metres of silk next month. This really is small-batch colour.
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A few plant-dyed silks and linens.
From top:
fresh leaf indigo
indigo + oak gall
reed flower
madder
madder
oak gall
oak gall + iron
heather
Mordant: oak gall + alum.
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Gorse flower on linen. These winter colours are precious. Hours of work for a piece of cloth that will only make five bag linings. Using both plant-dyed and synthetic dyes in my work makes me value both for different reasons.
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Common reed results. This really is a magic one, not many plants give this intense green. (Colour brighter in real life). I use it in my bag linings and in smaller patchwork details to preserve the colour. It’s not one that likes repeated washes or too much sunlight.
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Love this selection of local plant colours by Rebecca Desnos.
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Stitchwort, forget-me-not, fern, bog asphodel and wild grasses. These have plant-dyed linings, silverweed leaf + walnut. {shop update}.
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Oak leaf. Beautiful colours by Danish plant dyers g-uld. Leaf, twigs + acorns can be used. They are a substantive dye, containing tannins so don’t need a mordant before dyeing. Top colour is the first dyebath - blue/greys are achieved with iron modifier.
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Day 3 of the katagami + indigo course and I had the courage to use the 150 year old stencil that belonged to my great granny. It was beautiful to use and testament to the supreme skill of the stencil maker that it can still function. Linen, over-dyed with nettle + indigo.
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The fresh leaf indigo on silk from earlier in the week. Still plenty of life in the leaves and this process creates a softer teal blue than the traditional indigo blue.
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This is where some of the dye-works go. On Friday I’ll have a new batch of one-offs available online including these printed and patchwork pieces.
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Meanwhile in Shetland, it’s indigo dye day for Donna Smith. What a beautiful sight!
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A beautiful colour wheel of plant-dyed yarns by horticulturalist and craftsperson Julia Billings.
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Alder cones. A muted palette from these plant tannins, with iron modifier for the greys. Straightforward to use, no mordant required, but quite a cloying scent when the cones/twigs are heated in the dye-pot.
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Testing ten plant-dyed linen swatches for lightfastness. These will be partially covered and taped to the window for several weeks. Ideally the colours will gently soften rather than fade to beige. All have been mordanted with aluminium acetate, oak gall and/or iron.
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This is what woad can do. Gorgeous blues on noil silk by Allan Brown. From plants he grew on his allotment this summer.
hedgerow.couture over on instagram for more.
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Plant dyes - all the colours achievable from leaf, flower and root within around a five mile radius. The red hot poker root was a gift from a friend on Skye but that’s only several miles across the water…
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Over in the Canadian PNW, Cheryl Verheyden is crocheting up some gorgeous granny squares with plant-dyed yarn snippets.
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Samhain. A liminal time when the boundary between this world and the otherworld thins. This understory of birch woodland is by Loch an Draing, a stand of trees along a fault line near here. In folklore it's the home of the Gille Dubh. An atmospheric place at any time of year.
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This is St. John’s Wort on sashiko thread. Hand-dyed plant colour goodness by Californian based dyer Heidi Iverson.
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Indigo yarn goodness from Shetland dyer and knitwear designer Donna Smith. What a washing line, what a view.
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A beauty at the Museum of Scotland yesterday. It’s an Egyptian Coptic sock, designed to be worn with sandals. The wool was stitched with a single short needle (close to nalebinding) and scraps of different coloured wool were used. Approx 300-600 AD. The colours!
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Snippets of linen dyed with willow leaf, iris root, heather and bog myrtle. Working on some one-off pieces.
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Hand block printing with natural indigo dye in Jaipur, Rajasthan.
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Weld, madder, cochineal and indigo dyed yarn. These are cotton; cellulose fibres are generally trickier to dye and these examples by Emma Kylmala are beautifully done. Available at Loop London (camden passage, Islington).
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Nettle, flax and hemp. Picked, processed, spun into yarn, dyed and woven on a loom. So much work but worth it for the beautiful results. Created by Allan Brown.
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Here’s an update on the indigo leaf that I hammered directly onto silk/linen fabric. Ten days ago, on left, it was mainly green with hint of blue. Now, right, after ten days in a south facing window and a wash. Indigo blue.
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Some lovely plant dyed colours here by Sam Bova of Red Dog Yarn. The plum purple madder/logwood combo is particularly lovely. Logwood isn’t the most lightfast colour on its own, but on well mordanted cloth combined with sturdy madder it would be longer-lived.
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Bristol green glass is being made in the city again after 200 years. Experimenting with the process, the founder of Bristol Blue glass found that iron oxide from Redcliffe caves and cobalt created the right mineral mix.
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Fly agaric, moss, stitchwort, feather, waxing gibbous moon. A seasonal shift and I’m back to the velvets.
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Tiny worlds. Fruiting moss and lichen on a tree stump.
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Weld, madder and indigo. Three classic and easily growable plant dyes with a high fastness and wide scope for blending and tones. These lovely examples are by Ellie Fisher of Elka Textiles.
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Seascape stripe, printed velvet purse. Linen lining dyed with oak gall.
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This quilt is incredible. All plant-dyed colours too, by Earth Made Quilt. She’s not parting with this one, totally get that, as makers we do sometimes have keepers.
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This week I’m learning all things plant-dye printing on fabric and paper. Using dyes, extracts, guar gum, modifiers and mordants for silk screen and stencil. So much colour alchemy from plants.
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Natural dye wheel by Wonky Weaver, samples dyed on Welsh wool yarn.
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Now that’s a washing line. Multi-crafter Midge Porter has been busy dyeing this batch of yarn loveliness. Indigo, logwood, weld, brazilwood and madder.
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Linen results. Grey dyed with oak gall and iron. Yellow dyed with heather (mordanted with oak gall and alum)
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Cortinarius fervidus, also known as dyer's webcap, dyed by Anna Kjellander.
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Wonderful snippets of madder by Jacqui Symons. The dye takes differently on cellulose and protein fabrics (generally being richer on wool and silk) but it creates lovely chalky pinks and corals on linen and cotton too.
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Woah! This lichen-inspired enamelled jewellery is by Eileen O'Shea.
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Recent colours from the dye pot. From L to R, bog myrtle, hawthorn, walnut leaf + iron, and walnut leaf.
(dyed on linen, mordanted with aluminium acetate).
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Spools of wool and silk dyed with eucalyptus by Sally Blake. Fibres that take dye so beautifully, what a combination.
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Subtle indigo greens, shown here by Danish dyers G-uld. The colour builds from a beige or yellow plant-dyed base. This could be a tannin rich oak gall through to alum mordanted yellow from weld flower. Over-dyeing with indigo gives a range of greens.
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Cortinarius sanguineus, blood red webcap, grows in pine forests and can dye these beautiful colours. Gathered and dyed here by Anna Kjellander in Sweden.
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Gathering gorse for the dye pot this afternoon, it was delicately coconut scented in the sunshine.
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Gorse flower on the line. Two linens showing the difference that temperature makes to petal dyes. A slow simmer on the left for vibrant yellow, hotter dye pot on the right that has muted the colour. Both useable colours but quite a difference.
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A few plant-dyed panels that I’ll be taking to CRAFT Cheltenham next month. These have been squirrelled away since last year’s event and I’ll switch out a couple of colours. I have a greener reed from August’s batch, a sunnier yellow gorse, and much more indigo to choose from.
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Marigold and madder, delicious homegrown colour by Allan Brown. {handspun mohair}.
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A bundle of plant-dyed goodness that I can’t wait to patchwork. Lots of madder, some heather, willow leaf, iris root and logwood dyed fabric here. Mostly linen and cotton, but a couple of noil silks at the back (red and orange).
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Meanwhile, over in California, Heidi Iverson is cooking up some yarn with dyer’s puffball (pisolithus arrhizus). A funghi that is rare in the UK but more common in southern Europe and the USA. That colour!
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I’ve only been active on twitter for a year, what a time to dive in, but I like it here, so I’m a bit threads meh - but I’m over there with the popcorn, redrubyrose. This is currently on my studio desk, all the plant-dyed snippets.
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The fresh leaf indigo on a metre of silk. I could happily dye metres of this, it’s such a lovely process/colour. Maybe next year I can grow enough to do just that.
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Early cow parsley giving chartreuse shades on yarn. Dyed by Emma Kylmala, she notes it’s more typically a bright yellow. The variations and quirks of plant dyes.
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Homegrown and foraged colour takes time and commitment. Emma at Town dyer has achieved this combination beautifully here. Coreopsis, madder, weld, indigo, walnut and reed.
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