Wednesday 12 April 2017

My new dye garden

New dye garden
 I now have a small patch for dye plants and have already sown seeds of tagetes and purple carrot. Weld seeds are growing in my cold frame. My one and only woad plant is just coming into flower so I will harvest seed from that later in the year.
I had some indigo plants in here last year but they didn't flower in time to survive the frosts.
Woad nearly in flower

Quince flower

Daffodils in soak






Below is a flower on the quince tree I planted last year which is in the same flower bed.

























I have been collecting daffodil flowers from various family member's gardens. These have been in soak for a couple of days in an aluminium pan and a good colour is developing. So watch this space for the results. I don't have a lot of dye so will probably just try some threads.
Dandelions will be next, they are taking over my lawn, and then I want to try Rosemary of which I have loads. I have lots of flowers in the garden which I want to try, dark colour tulips worked well last year, as did blue iris and a shrub whose name has completely escaped me at the moment.
Exciting times.

11 comments:

  1. Growing things is fun in itself, then add dyeing from what grows and....more fun (for you, but not me ;). Are you and Kathyinozarks in touch, Debbie? She loves dyeing from nature as well. Her blog is Hummingbird Woodland Studio.

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    1. Hi Barbara, I do follow Kathy's blog but she hasn't talked about dyeing for a while

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    2. She has on her latest blog. Check my sidebar for "Hummingbird Woodland Studio" her new blog and where her crafty posts have been lately. Just this week she posted about Shibori books.

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  2. this feels SO good to me....photographs and the words, the intention,
    the Happiness....
    i look forward to Beginning Again and this inspires that kind of energy

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    1. I'm glad Grace that this feels good to you, your new beginnings sound great to me, a big new beginning. I am really looking forward to nurturing new plants and dyeing with them.

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  3. Exciting times indeed! I will watch with interest to see what your daffodils give. xx

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    1. Hoping to have time this weekend to do some dyeing, the liquid is a lovely colour at the moment.

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  4. Can't wait to see your results......Debs......how do you get your blog page onto fb? Am fascinated.

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    1. Hi Jan, I have cooked the daffodils today so nearly at the dyeing stage.
      When you write a post, view the post and underneath it has icons for social media sites, if you click on the fb one you can then post on fb, if you have more than one fb page make sure you have the one you want to post to open. Hope that makes sense, it took me ages to work that out.

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  5. This has inspired me,I have been experimenting with printing with wood blocks .It would be great to dye the fabrics naturally first.I have so many idea I do nor know which to do first which means I sometimes do nothing Ha ha!

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