MORNING IN THE GARDEN
My garden yielded lovely flowers, herbs and vegetables for the table all summer long. But it also gave me petals, leaves & roots for fabric dyeing.
These are some pages from my dyeing notebook in which I recorded my experimentation with various herbal and floral mixtures, various fabrics, with overdyes and with different mordants and after dips.
I pressed the petals or leaves onto the pages and recording whether the dye bath used dried or fresh plant material. Almost always, I added the finished fabric to my notebook.
The day I found woad plants for sale, I shouted with joy as they are not commonly found in garden centers. In fact, I never had seen it growing before that day! Although some people consider woad a pervasive weed, it was the northern European version of indigo, used mostly by the early celts who painted their bodies with it before going naked, or nearly so, into battle.
The results of these vegetable dyes are a wonderfully soft palette of earthy colors ~~ not highly saturated. But they are color fast because of the mordants used.
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