Confession time: Dyeing scares me.
(dyeing - as in making things colourful)
There is so much science about it - and as much as I love geeking out and learning the details, I also get lost in them.
What if I do it wrong? What if it's ugly? What if...
A few months ago, I was putting my garden to bed for the winter and I was thinking about this list of what if's, probably because I was digging up some madder roots for a new garden because I love the colours madder makes and you can never have too much.
I put aside about a third of the madder root for drying and dyeing at some later date. Because one day I'll know enough to be able to use it. I've never seen instructions for dyeing with fresh root before. Maybe it's not possible. Someone would have told me if it was.
Then I started to get angry at myself. Why don't I just do it? It's only yarn. I've got nearly 5 kilometres of handspun yarn ready for just this sort of harvest. It's not like I need a specific colour, all I want are pretty reds. What keeps stopping me from dyeing?
The answer, I'm sad to say, is me.
So I designed an experiment based on what I know about madder. Scared that I might destroy all that handspun yarn, but excited too that I could finally do this thing.
It's so pretty!
PS, don't miss out on the easter eggs at the end of the video.
2 comments:
I've never tried growing madder, and I'm impressed with your harvest.
Nicely done video. Good composition of your shots. Very appealing.
You did indeed get wonderful results! Those are beautiful colours. I wish I was more of a gardener; it'd be nice to grow the colours for my projects…
I haven't tried dyeing yet, but I've been collecting onion skins for a few years now, and I probably have enough to try dyeing something this summer. Like you, it'll be very unscientific dyeing, just trying stuff out and seeing what this gives me. To start with, my bag contains a very unscientific mix of yellow and red onion skins, so whatever I do wouldn't be reproducible anyway. So I'm just going to have fun with it and see what comes out! I'm thinking of doing it on fabric, and turning that fabric into a dress. I don't care if the colour fades eventually: I can simply dye it again a different colour!
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