Elusive Green

Can there be anything more frustrating to a natural dyer than to be surrounded by hundreds of lovely shades of spring green, yet not being able to recapture any of them in the dye pot? Loughton Valley Park is full of fresh new green leaves and shoots, but it seems almost impossible to distill them out into skeins of wool.

I first came across this problem earlier in the year, when I tried to dye with ivy leaves. I experienced then what I called my first 'failure', in that my alum mordanted skeins remained a dirty off white colour, and only the copper mordanted skein turned a pale green, mainly thanks to the bluish influence of the copper. Now I realise that green is a really hard colour to obtain in a one-step process. I'm working steadily through all the leaves that Jenny Dean tells me will yield dye, but so far with limited success. My best greens to date have also been obtained with a copper mordant, on narcissus flowers and dyer's broom.

My back up plan is to try a two step process, whereby I use a dye bath first of woad and then to over-dye it with weld, to make Lincoln Green.