Another wonderful day in the Weeds and Seeds garden in the Finsbury Park Art Club.
Today we planned on to dyeing cotton, including some cotton thread. Here is Azyba preparing skeins and tie them securely before the scouring and mordanting.
In September the garden looked a little different. The sunflowers stood high and bright, and although the Coreopsis beds weren’t as great, the Buddleia bushes made up for it, with their striking yellow dye.
May, the master gardener, could not hold herself – the ends of a T-shirt sleeves went in, within a few minutes the colour was already strong.
As we had started with the soft light purple of the flowers, one would never imagine they would turn into yellow, it is all in the chemistry. It opens your eyes and wonder about appearances.
One of the jars we prepared on Day 1 and left out for solar dyeing had broken, but the other was fine – so exciting. Opening ‘bundles’ is a terribly exciting thing, smiles are often uncontainable. The Acer leaves worked well with the Coreopsis.
It was such fun, and I never thought you could get such great colours from plants.
Nadia
London
