Jenny Dean’s Wild Colour

 The photos below show some cushions I knitted recently for my daughter, who wanted a “modern design using oranges and blues”. I’m not sure to what extent the patterns I designed can be described as “modern” but at least the colours are right! The dyes I used are my old favourites – madder and indigo.

To achieve an orange shade with madder, I used about 25% madder on an alum mordant and then applied an acidic modifier made with clear vinegar. The paler shades were from the exhaust dyebath.

The knitting technique I used for the cushions is a form of patchwork I use fairly frequently for cushions and bags. I start off with a square or rectangle, then pick up stitches along one side and knit in that direction for a while. I leave these stitches on a spare needle, or a length  of yarn, and then I pick up stitches from another side and knit back and forth along that edge for a while. And so on. The designs develop as I knit and give me plenty of scope for colour patterning as well.

For the reverse side of these cushions, I dyed some woollen fabric in indigo, cut it to size and then stitched it onto the knitting. I made an opening for the cushion pad by overlapping the edges of fabric, as with a pillowcase, so it will be easy to remove the cushion cover for washing.

The gloom of this dull, damp, miserable winter was relieved this week when I received an unexpected gift through the post – a recently-published  book on natural dyeing, co-authored by Eva Lambert and Tracy Kendall.

I have known Eva for many years and visited her several times in her studio and dye-workshop on the Isle of Skye. She has a wealth of practical experience to share, as she has been running her own business, Shilasdair, for many years, selling her naturally-dyed yarns and beautiful garments made from them. Tracy Kendall, whom I met several years ago when we were both demonstrating dyeing at a conference on Mediaeval Dyes, is a lecturer at Central Saint Martins College in London and she also has her own design studio producing hand silk-screened wallpapers.

The book, “The Complete Guide to Natural Dyeing – Techniques and recipes for dyeing fabrics, yarns and fibres at home”, is a lavishly illustrated, full colour paperback, published by Search Press and selling at £12.99. It covers the basics of mordanting and dyeing, and the yarn section, written by Eva Lambert, also includes top-dyeing, tie-dyeing and random dyeing. The fabric section, written by Tracy Kendall, covers several fabric-patterning techniques, including various resist-dyeing methods, such as folding, clamping and batik.

The dyeing sections cover collecting and preparing dyestuffs and give recipes for using a wide range of dyes, including classic dyes, such as madder, cochineal, weld and logwood, plus a section on indigo dyeing.

As a dyer, I am always interested in the methods and techniques used by other dyers. Some of the recipes in this book, especially those for mordanting fibres, differ from those I use  myself and I found the sections on colour and patterns interesting. All in all, this book is a delight, full of useful techniques and recipes, with luscious colour on every page.

I haven’t used onion skins in the dyepot for several years, although I still always save them, and I keep the red onion skins separately from the brown ones, as they often give slightly different shades in the dyepot. Whilst rummaging through some of the boxes in my workshop recently, I unearthed several bags of onion skins, so last week I decided to use some of them to dye some skeins of wool.

Onion skins will dye quite readily without the use of a mordant but for the strongest, most vivid colours I use an alum mordant. However, if you use unmordanted fibres, the use of an alkaline modifier after dyeing will increase the depth and brilliance of the shades. For very deep colours you may need to use 100% weight of onion skins to weight of fibres, but I usually find that 50% gives sufficient depth and brilliance.

Colours on wool from brown onion skins

I started off by using some brown onion skins. The above photo shows, from left to right: Alum mordant, alum + iron and, from the exhaust dyebath, alum mordant, alum + iron

I then made a dyebath using some red onion skins. In the past, I have sometimes achieved interesting green colours from red onion skins but this time the colours obtained were not as bright as I had hoped they would be, probably because I only had a handful of skins. The photo below shows from left to right: alum mordant, alum mordant + alkali, alum mordant + iron, no mordant, no mordant + alkali.

Colours on wool from red onion skins

Afterwards, I wondered why it had taken me so long to get round to dyeing with onion skins again, as they really do give lovely colours, even if their light-fastness is limited.

As a Christmas gift to myself, I was unable to resist buying some of Leena Riihela’s naturally-dyed skeins of wool. (Click on the link to her website for more details of what Leena has to offer.)

My daughter had asked me to knit a jumper for Milly, my granddaughter, and she wanted something that could be worn outside as an alternative to a coat. The advantage of a jumper is that it has no front-fastening buttons to come undone and I also knew that I’d need to knit something warm enough for outdoor wear and loose enough to enable Milly to wear a T-shirt underneath.

So this is the jumper I knitted. The pattern I made up is so simple, as it consists mainly of rectangles and the sleeves are knitted by picking up stitches around the armholes and working down towards the cuff. The shoulder-opening makes it easy to put on too and I hope my daughter and granddaughter will be pleased.

The wool was dyed mainly in cochineal, with some indigo, and the shades blend in together beautifully. So many thanks to Leena for producing such lovely colours.

A little while ago, I wrote about a group of basket makers in Uganda, who weave beautiful baskets from naturally-dyed raffia. (See post “A Natural Dyeing Project in Uganda”)      

One aim of this project was to produce blues from the leaves of Indigofera arrecta, an indigo-bearing plant which grows wild in the area around Rubona, where the project is based. For some time I have been in correspondence with the project leader, Rupert Kampmueller, offering advice to help him achieve this aim, and I was convinced that the methods used to extract indigo from fresh woad leaves could be adapted for use with this local source of indigo.

This week I was very pleased to hear from Rupert that, after much trial and error, he has at last been successful in his attempts to produce deep blues from locally-harvested indigo leaves. Based on the methods I use for dyeing with fresh woad leaves, Rupert has developed suitable extraction and dyeing methods to enable the ladies in the Rubona group to produce a range of blues on raffia, using the leaves of locally-growing Indigofera arrecta. The next stage will be to see whether the method I use for storing woad solutions can also be used successfully with indigo solutions made from the leaves of these Ugandan plants.

The following photos, supplied by Rupert, show some of the stages of production.

 This photo shows Indigofera arrecta growing wild near Rubona.

Following processes similar to those used with fresh woad leaves, leaves from these indigo-bearing plants are harvested and first steeped in very hot water. After an hour or so, the leaves are removed and soda ash is added to the liquid. Oxygen is then incorporated into the solution to precipitate the indigo particles.

This shows the strained-off indigo solution being poured from one bucket to another to incorporate oxygen.

This shows the froth containing the precipitated indigo pigment.

 This shows the raffia dyed in the indigo vat made from the leaves of Indigofera arrecta.

This successful use of local indigo plants is of great significance for the weavers of Rubona, as it means they now have a readily available source of blue and no longer need to rely on imported indigo.

Once again, I send my most sincere thanks for all the kind messages I’ve received, following the announcement that “Wild Colour” will be revised and reprinted later this year.

I really appreciate all the encouragement and support I’ve been given.