Madder

Planting my dye garden
Natural dyeing / Woolfest

Planting my dye garden

At woolfest in 2015 I bought three dye plants ,  Madder, Ladies Bedstraw and Rubekia from Fiery Felts. Here there are with all my other woolfest goodies. At the time I had nowhere to plant them so they stayed in their pots at my daughters.  When I returned to the UK late 2015 and I looked for a spot in my garden where I could make a dye garden .  I found a place which was nice and sheltered with a house wall at the back. The  big snag was it was totally overtaken by vinca.  This is a most dreadful invasive plant in my opinion , I have no idea why I ever planted it in the first place. So for the first few months of 2016 I attempted to kill the Vinca by covering it with some old carpets.  I then dug it all out,  well I tried hard to…

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10/07/2016
Worldwide colours of felt
Natural dyeing / Textiellink / Wet felting

Worldwide colours of felt

I am delighted that a piece of mine will be appearing in Worldwide colours of felt which is due for publication in June by Textiellink.  I am even more delighted that the piece that was chosen was dyed with madder. There are pictures of felt works from over 500 artists from 40 countries in the book. With this good news it seems an ideal opportunity to look back at how my piece was made. First I laid out white merino on a resist. Then used more resists to add wings and I also added cords. The finished vessel was difficult to dry and so I slung it in the garden used a foam roller, an old broom handle and lots of gaffer tape along with skewers to curls the cords.   Here it is straight out of the dye pot .  I had to tied it up , to make it fit…

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02/05/2016
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