New Year, New Project

With the start of 2017 comes a new project. This year, Milton Keynes, the city in which I live, will celebrate the 50th anniversary of its foundation. As a local textile artist, I am planning a project to celebrate this important milestone. I shall explore the potential that my surroundings afford for natural dyeing.

I was inspired to explore natural dyeing after reading about the Winterbourne Dye Project, based in the Winterbourne Botanic Garden in Edgebaston, Birmingham. For more information on the Winterbourne Dye Project see the 2016 Winter Issue of The Journal of Weavers, Spinners and Dyers or visit their blog at http://tinyurl.com/winterbourne-dye. Over the course of this anniversary year,  I shall harvest parts of the many plants that grow locally around my home in Loughton, Milton Keynes, using ecologically sound principles, including their leaves, flowers, berries, nuts, bark, stems and roots. I shall process these in order to extract natural dyestuff, which will then be applied to skeins of pure wool. These will be incorporated into a series of weavings to encapsulate the ever-changing seasonal colours of Loughton.

The exciting thing about natural dyes is that in many instances it is far from obvious what colour will be released from the dyestuff. Nearly everyone knows that onion skins yield orange dye, blackberries deep purple and beetroot pink, but it is less obvious that a dye can be obtained from apple pruning or ivy berries. I have read that the colours produced by plants may vary according to the time of day, season and weather conditions at the time of gathering, the mordants used to fix the dye and the concentration of the dye bath. As well as reflecting the colours of Loughton, it is exciting to consider that the weavings I make will reflect my very personal journey into the world of natural dyeing.

The purpose of this blog is to record that journey, beginning with my preparations for this year-long project. In the dying week of 2016 (no pun intended!) I converted my greenhouse into a dyeing studio. As well as a heater, essential during the winter months, this now contains a two ring hob, a kettle, a slow cooker, some stainless steel stock pots (cast iron pots and pans could 'sadden' the colour of my natural dyes), plastic tubs for steeping raw material to break it down, weighing scales and a basket containing my newly-purchased mordants, which I shall introduce when I prepare my first skeins of wool to receive their dyes. Let the project begin!