We had a fabulous day in Seeds and Weeds garden of the Finsbury Park Art Club. It is lovingly cared by a few but dedicated volunteers, led by May, the master gardener. Everyone is always most welcome to visit and wonder about.
We worked on both protein and cellulose fibers to learn about the scouring and mordanting. We also picked plants from the garden to use as dye material. I added some Madder and Cochineal extracts that I brought along to ensure we had some vibrant colours.
I brought some rainwater from home, and this gave me the opportunity to show the impact that the water’s Ph has in the end colour of some dyes. Here is an example of the differences with Cochineal dye.
During the scouring and mordanting, we had time to prepare the plant matter and extract their dyes. We tried a few different dyeing techniques: basic immersion with heat, eco-printing and some Shibori. We also prepared some solar dyeing jars. These were left to unveil in September, at our Day 2 of the workshop.
During the day we talked about light and wash-fastness, scouring, mordanting. We all be checking on our work within the next few weeks and contrasting results. There was a definite winner in one of our experiments, from the flowers of a blue salvia bush. These Pompoms were dyed with, from top to bottom: Madder, Cochineal, Salvia and Coreopsis.
I spent ages reading and thinking about dyeing before I spent that lovely day with you in Finsbury Park. Now I just dive in and experiment… what’s the worst thing that can happen? It’s definitely brightening up my local lockdown. It’s amazing what’s in my cupboards and locality.
Liz Tucker
Teacher, Wales
