The Book of Forgotten Crafts by Paul Felix

Author:Paul Felix [Felix, Paul; Ellis, Sian; and Quinn, Tom]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4463-5399-8
Publisher: David & Charles
Published: 2011-03-17T16:00:00+00:00

Jane Meredith runs the popular Plant Dyed Wool workshops beside the River Wye.

Wodges of wool are dropped into dye baths created from foliage and flowers grown in Jane‘s garden.

Carding helps to tease out the fibres, get rid of any bits and generally makes the wool lighter and more airy.

ADDING COLOUR

To create dyes, Jane collects her chosen foliage and flowers, chops them up and puts them into various large cauldrons of boiling water that she sets up in the garden. Then she drops wodges of wool into these dye baths, leaving them to simmer for half an hour or so, occasionally stirring with a stick.

‘I’m quite cavalier in the amounts of flowers I use,’ she smiles. ‘I do it by feel, though I do refer to books for recipes. Spring, summer and autumn are best for dyeing, when plants are coming into flower and are at their peak. For instance, you need at least four days of sunshine on woad before picking in order to get its blue colour, otherwise it produces a brown.’

Some dyestuffs – like lichen, which gives an orange tint – can be used directly on wool. Other plants require the wool to be prepared first so that it can absorb the colour. This is called mordanting.

‘William Partridge’s 1776 Treatise on Dying [sic] is amazingly precise and methodical,’ Jane says. ‘It states two buckets of urine as a mordant. I prefer to simmer the wool with chrome, alum, copper or rhubarb leaves! Different mordants have different effects, according to the chemistry with the dyes. For example, if you mordant wool with chrome and dye with onion skins, the result is a light-fast golden ginger. If you use alum, the wool comes out paler and isn’t very light fast, but it does fade beautifully.

‘I like to mordant with rhubarb leaves because they are natural, but they are also highly poisonous, which I always emphasise at workshops.’

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