More news from the Ditchling Museum course

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I’m afraid I have got rather behind with posts about the one-year natural dyeing course, so here is an update of what we have been doing. Photos will follow as soon as I have some from the students. (I rarely get time to take photos myself during the sessions, so I rely on my students for images.)

We have covered a range of topics since my last post. They include:

Contact Printing using plant materials 

      

Some of the students’ contact printed scarves

Tests using different percentages of alum mordant         

Dyeing black using tannin and iron and dyeing black using weld, madder and indigo

Overdyeing in indigo     

Setting up fastness tests using samples dyed with avocado stones         

Dyeing yellow and pink with safflower   

Dyeing with sticklac (Recipe from Colours from Nature p61)

Sticklac before extracting the colour

Adding clear vinegar to pH4 to assist colour extraction 

Results from the sticklac dye bath Fabrics from top: silk, cotton, linen Yarns from left: no modifier, + acid, + alkali, + copper, + iron

Using the alkaline extraction method with madder, rhubarb root and buckthorn bark (Recipe from Colours from Nature p36

Testing the pH for the alkaline colour extraction method. 

For an excellent overview of the course, with photos, I would recommend the blog diary kept by Helen Gibbs: 
https://blogs.brighton.ac.uk/naturalcolour/2018/12/15/iron-black-redipped/

If you click on the above link you can then navigate forwards and backwards to see all the posts from the beginning of the course.

All photos by Helen Gibbs