To Feed The Head, The Heart and The Hands - By Annie Hogg

During 2020 lockdown, Flora Arbuthnott of Plants & Colour gave a call out for a new Study Group series based around plants and colour, obviously enough! We began as we continue today, with each term or round running for a 6 month period and meeting once a month for a two hour Zoom call. Having signed up out of interest to connect with like-minded folks, I could not possibly have fore seen then just how important these monthly meet ups were to become to me.

Our group, known as the Morning Group, still holds some original members, along with many new members and those who return when life allows. We share our experiments and perhaps even more importantly our ethos. We are united by our common desire to experiment with colours and materials from natural sources, but also the desire to connect to our landscapes, and to be involved in generating alternatives in our own practices and in our greater communities.

We are a collection of international dyers, paper makers, curious chemists, community facilitators, hedge ink makers, growers, spinners, textile artists, photographers, indigo aficionados and experimenters to name only some.

We share our various material knowledge freely, not only about our own practices and findings, but also about our cultural settings, from historical and present perspectives. There are many rabbit holes to run down after each meeting, and I have a recommended reading list as long as my arm to be getting through!

The sense of true connection that this group has fostered is both a privilege and a life line to be a part of. I have brought many conundrums to the group. Anything from how to successfully dye nylon in a rust bath, to “would this be a good idea for a funding proposal”. We all do and, it has to be noted, with far more interesting questions than mine. Without fail, advice, experience and support is collectively offered.

There is a feeling I have been mulling around for a little while now and it is this. When our Study Group first began, it was during a time of renewed or relatively new interest in sustainable practices. It was part of a larger movement of interest which, in the back of my mind, I admit I thought with regret, was just a fad. But now I am delighted to say that my mind has changed to thinking that far from a momentary show of tokenism, natural based practices are in fact at the forefront of a new revolution in craft and art. And that instead of dwindling, we are enabling each other to push through limits of materials and mindsets. To paraphrase a telling comment by one of our group members - we are picking up where people left off when the advent of synthetic production interrupted the advancement of the natural materials.

It is exciting and vital to be connected to people who share in this ethos and who are both curious and active in seeking some of the answers. It feeds the mind, the heart and the hands.

I look forward, without fail to each monthly meeting. Revelling in seeing all the lovely faces pop up on the screen, and catching up with each other’s findings and news from the previous month. I always step away with excitement at the potentials which undoubtedly get raised, and consider myself very lucky to be included in this band of colour makers.

Written by Annie Hogg - https://www.anniehoggstudio.com/

Five Ways To Work With Woad

Woad coming in to flower

Woad (istasis tinctoria) is a biannual brassica. The leaves contain the precursors for indigo. In the summer of the first year, the leaves contain the most potential for indigo. In the early spring of the second year, the plants go to flower, these flowers transform to seeds that can be harvested in the summer of the second year.

Extracting indigo from woad

First year woad in summer

• To obtain the indigo pigment, you can harvest the fresh leaves and extract the indigo through a process of soaking, oxidising, flocculating, and then rinsing the pigment. This pigment can be used to make an indigo dye vat for textiles and paper, or used to make indigo ink and paint. 

• You can create a pink dye from the left over woad leaves after using them to extract indigo pigment. Simply steep the used leaves in hot water. Remove the leaves the next day and add your fabric. Simmer for an hour and then soak over night for a soft pink colour.

• Leaf pounding technique. The leaves are fantastic for leaf pounding. Lay the leaves on your fabric and then fold the fabric back over the leaves. Use a hammer to pound the leaves in to the fabric for a vibrant turquoise colour. 

• Salt extraction. A quick way to dye fibres with woad is to use salt. Harvest the first year woad leaves in the summer. Add a spoonful of salt and macerate the leaves. The salt will draw out the moisture and the indigo from the leaves creating a green liquid. Soak your fabrics in this liquid over night for a beautiful soft blue colour. 

• Woad seed lake pigment. You can create a lake pigment from ripe woad seeds using soda ash and alum. This can be used to make a blue paint. I cover this technique in the course in Botanical Ink & Paint Making I run.

There are so many different ways to work with woad! What is your favourite process with woad?

Making lake pigments. The blue pigment is from woad seed.

Drawing with indigo pigment

Extracted indigo

Drawing with woad seed pigment and coreopsis ink

Five Flowers For Inks & Dyes

Here are five of my favourite dye and ink plants. These are all plants you can easily grow in the UK. I find that all flowers will give some pigment, but not all plants will give vibrant distinctive colours.

Buddleia flowers

Buddleia - This is a perennial woody shrub/tree that grows commonly in urban industrial edges and gardens. The flowers start to bloom in June and continue throughout the Summer. The flowers are very abundant making it possible to gather large quantities without depleting the supply for the butterflies and bees who also love them. All the flowers, regardless whether they are pink, white, or yellow give a bright yellow dye. This is effective with an aluminium based mordant on silk and wool. You can also do bundle dyeing with the flowers as the flowers release their pigment quickly.

Gertrude Jekyll Rose

Roses - All plants in the rose family are high in tannin. This means that they will react with iron to give black. Roses also give pinks, yellows, and greens. I use roses for bundle dyeing to create soft pink and black patterns. I have also got interesting yellow effects when using cotton mordanted with aluminium acetate. Rose petals work well in the lake pigment process, giving a large quantity of green pigment that is reactive with mild acids, metals.

Coreopsis flowers

Dyer’s Coreopsis (coreopsis tinctoria) - This tender annual plant has yellow and red flowers that give a vibrant orange dye, ink, and paint. I grow these flowers from seed each year. The plants are prolific, giving new flowers every day. The petals give off colour very readily meaning you only need one or two plants to have enough to give an effect.

Tagetes Marigold flowers

Marigold (Tagetes spp) - These flowers are commonly grown all around the world for their bright colours. They are called ‘insectories” as they attract insects to them, making them a useful addition to an organic garden. The flowers give a beautiful mustard yellow colour on textiles, and a green or yellow ink. I sow the seed in April, pot on in May, and then plant out the young plants in my garden in June. The more you harvest the flowers, the more flowers come.

Dahlia flowers

Dahlia Flowers - Dahlias are tender perennials that can survive outside all year round in milder climates. I keep my dahlias in the ground all year round, ensuring they are well mulched and the tubers are low enough beneath the soil to protect them from the frost. You can get dahlias in many different colours, and the different flowers give many different colours when dyeing and ink making. Not always the colour you expect. The colours are also sensitive to pH, meaning that the same flower can give different colours depending on the pH of the water. I love dark purple dahlias as these can give greens. Oranges are commonly produced from many dahlia flowers.

If you would like to learn more, check out the online courses I offer.

Coreopsis dyed fabric and fabric bundle dyed with marigolds and iron

Colours from dahlia flowers on silk

Rose, buddleia, and iron on silk

Marigold dye pot

Coreopsis ink

Nature Connection Through Wild Dyes

My practice with natural dyes and inks is a process of learning how to live in a more close and practical relationship with the natural world. Working with seasons, wild plants, and chemical free processes to create a culture around colour that is directly from and closely connected with the land where we live. Through roughly 13000 years of agriculture, we have become increasingly separated from nature. The synthetic dye industry, developed in the 1800s is one of the most polluting industries on the planet. Globally, the textile industry discharges 40,000 – 50,000 tons of dye into water systems every year. This cocktail of polluted water and chemicals, causes the death of aquatic life, contaminating soils and poisoning of drinking water. It is also now clear that we are living in a time of human caused mass extinction and climate chaos. We need to find a new ways of living that are more connected with the natural world.  

I am hugely influenced by a short time I spent in with the Ju’hoansi (The San Bushmen) in the Kalahari desert in 2018. These people hold a story of a rich way of life that is in harmony with the natural world, with old ancestral relationships with all animals, fungi, and plants who live around them such as the baobab, lions, the honeyguide bird, acacia trees, the springhare, lions etc. These relationships are built up through direct practical relationships, multiple generations of interactions and experiences passed on through stories. 

When learning about the natural world, we love to to label things. But to learn the name of a plant can often be the end of our curiosity. When we learn not just the names, but we get to know a plant in it’s character through all seasons and stages of it’s life cycle, and we start to interact. A deeper relationship develops and the name becomes almost irrelevant. We then start to integrate these useful plants and what we can make from them in to our lives. As we walk the land, we visit places where these plants grow and harvest, everywhere we go becomes imbibed with story. We create annual pilgrimages to visit the wild weld, the flowering mugwort, and the tansy. The becomes full of the stories of our own discoveries. Each one a small initiation in to the arms of the earth. Learning to live in relationship with the land. With this comes reverence and respect for the beings who live here.  

Many wild dye plants are untapped abundance, If you don’t harvest them, no-one else will.  Oak galls (a brown and black) fallen beneath a tree the can be harvested to make a brown or black ink. There used to be a forgotten alleyway in Bristol planted with pink roses where I would harvest the petals all summer. Look out for over-grown camellia bushes (red and yellow), or abandoned fruit trees (pink yellow and orange), the pruning of these are fantastic sources of dyes and inks. Look out for over grown stag horn sumac (grey and black). This is an invasive tree that takes over gardens, all parts of this tree are useful for dyeing as they are high in tannins. 

On the wild edges to the industrial estate where the buddleia flowers bloom (yellow) in the summer become a place to harvest and appreciate the butterflies. We create these cycles for ourselves on the land. The places where we return to, layering up memories. The walnut trees in the car park (brown and black), the abandoned eucalyptus plantation (pink and orange), The weld patch by the sea. These are all places near where I live where I harvest every year. Pieces of my local map I have created in my mind. The land becomes re-named in detail based on my discoveries. No need to write it down, the experiences you have discovering the magic of discovery mean that you will never forget these places. 

Through working with local wild plants, we develop a local colour palette. Responding to what is here. You can go out looking for something in particular but, unless you have already scouted out your foraging spots. you will get frustrated and come back empty handed most of the time. So it is important to be open to the unknown and respond to what you encounter. Being with, not doing to.

I am talking through the lens of working with wild dye plants, however, this approach is all about generalisation not specialisation. This practice is also applicable to wild food, medicine, and crafts, learning about birdsong, tracking, natural navigation, learning what wood is best for starting fires and what wood is best for cooking on. In the modern world, we are encouraged to be specialists. To choose one area of study and focus on and becoming an authority at that so that we can monetise our skill. When in the natural world, it is more rewarding to be a generalist because you are then able to give attention to all that you encounter rather than filtering out what can feel irrelevant. Being able to meet fully whatever you encounter. We all have our own subconscious filters of what we notice. When I go out, I am (slightly obsessively) attuned to noticing wild mushrooms. When I go out with others, I am amazed when they point out other things that I had not noticed such as bird calls, animal tracks or signs. There so much information around us, as we tune in, we start to be able to read the stories of the land, to notice the plucking post of a goshawk, what they had for dinner, and when. We can start to know where specific species of mushrooms are likely to pop up each year. We start to know where to look on unknown pieces of land for particular plants based on the topography. Responding to clues such as the dampness of the land, the altitude or proximity to the sea. We start to create our new migratory foraging routes, following the flow of abundance throughout the year. For me, the starts with the first warm sunny day imbolc with the harvesting of tree sap, and ending with icy velvet shanks in the midst of winter. 

Before synthetic dyes were invented in the 1800s, all dyes and pigments had natural sources. They were extracted from plants, rocks, earth minerals, or insects. Cultural identifies were defined by the colours that could be created from locally available materials. This gave colours symbolism and meaning connected to how the colour was made and who used it. 

Everyone would have worn the colours of the land. We would have had enduring relationships with these garments due to the energy and resources requited to create the fibres and the colours. Fabrics would have been cared for, repaired, and reused. 

Sharing the practice of creating colour from plants is about empowerment and self care through developing/deepening our relationship with nature. As we learn how to sustain ourselves with wild natural materials, we become part of the natural world again. 

Permaculture and Nature Connection

I have been fascinated by permaculture ever since I first heard about in in 2010. I was studying design at art school at that time, and I was frustrated. I felt that there was something missing in the design methodology that we were being taught. During the summer holidays, I stumbled across an Introduction to Permaculture session at a festival, and I was so excited to learn about a design methodology that incorporated the whole natural world, and not just humans. I was keen to learn more, so the next summer, I did a two week ‘Earth Activist Training’, exploring activism, spirituality, and permaculture, run by Starhawk and Andy Goldring. This experience blew my mind and permanently shifted something in my relationship with the natural world. In that short two weeks, we tasted something so rich and connected with nature. I had never experienced this before. I went back to my final year of art school quite bemused, I had had my world blown open, but I took me a long time to fully internalise the learnings and develop a new creative practice.

After graduating, I spent a year of trying to fit myself in to the design industry and feeling disconnected behind computers and post-it notes. I finally accepted that this wasn’t the right world for me and I went off to do an apprenticeship in horticulture and stick my hands in the soil. Through this time growing vegetables and learning about ecological growing techniques, I came to recognise that permaculture holds many pragmatic solutions to the complex problems we face in the climate and ecological crisis we live in. However, something still didn’t feel right. Despite having put myself physically closer to nature, there was something missing. I was seeking to connect with nature and yet, growing vegetables and herbs still felt like trying to control nature. I was not fully satisfied.

This has led me on to spend the past five years studying wild plants and developing my own nature connection practices around foraging for plant dyes, wild food, and medicine. Getting to know all the wild plants, trees, and fungi that live around us and how I can have a practical relationship with them. I have been inspired by learning from and about the most stable and sustainable cultures on the planet; egalitarian hunter gatherers. Partictularly the Ju’hoansi (the Bushmen) of the Kalahari. Learning about these peaceful people who live in the desert has given me hope that as humans, it is possible for live in balance and harmony with nature and also have a high quality of life. I do not seek to romanticise the past and I am not suggesting that we go back in time. I just seek to weave these learnings and practices in to my life in the modern world. To have a richer and more connected life being fully present in the natural world. Living in the UK, our indigenous lineage has been broken with the witch hunts, the clearances, and colonisation. So I have been on a journey of going back to learn from the land, as well as learning from wise people who are already doing this work. Such as The Seed Sisters, Rhizone Community Herbal, The Old Way, Fred Gillam, and Bruce Parry. I made friends with fellow foragers and we now gather in wild places throughout the seasons to share our learnings about plants and fungi together.

I am still gardening as well as foraging for seaweed, mushrooms, and plants. Deepening in to a seasonal life, living in the flow of the sun and the moon, while also being part of the modern world.

Permaculture and Natural Dyes

Permaculture stands for “permanent culture”, integrating human and ecological needs in to the design process. It is a series of design ethics and principles that you can apply to any design process or system. Developed by Bill Mollison and David Holmgren in Australia in the 1070s inspired by Masanobu Fukuoka's natural farming philosophy, written in his book ‘One Straw Revolution’.

Although Permaculture is usually associated with small holdings and hippies, I find the principles are useful guidelines for developing ideas, designing things, and systems of working. Both in relationship with the natural world, socially, and economically. I have applied this to my work making plant based inks and dyes, all the way through from gardening to studio practices.

Twelve permaculture design principles

Articulated by David Holmgren in his Permaculture: Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability:

I have added bullet points of reflections of how I like to apply the principles .

1. Observe and interact: By taking time to engage with nature we can design solutions that suit our particular situation.

   • Take time to get to know the plants that are growing around you, and fibres that are locally available.

2. Catch and store energy: By developing systems that collect resources at peak abundance, we can use them in times of need.

   • Reuse old dye baths to create print pastes and inks.

   • Collecting food waste to use for ink making.

   • Follow the energy of the plants. Harvest plants at their most vibrant time. Flowers in the summer, roots in the autumn etc.

   • We are not aiming for busyness. We are aiming for focussed efficiency of systems that keep your life free to be able to be present in the moment.

3. Obtain a yield: Ensure that you are getting truly useful rewards as part of the work that you are doing.

   • When starting out, use simple dye recipes that have few steps so you get quick results. Particularly when working with new plants.

   • Work with plants that are easy to harvest in abundance without too much work. Such as buddleia, oak galls, sumac, willow bark.

4. Apply self-regulation and accept feedback: We need to discourage inappropriate activity to ensure that systems can continue to function well.

   • Try out a few different processes with small quantities of plant material and fibres. Notice what works and what doesn’t work. Build on your successes.

   • Start small so that you feel able to respond to feedback. Being overly invested too soon can make it difficult to hear feedback that may make investments or hard work obsolete.

   • Become comfortable with the unknown. This is space for something new to come through.

5. Use and value renewable resources and services: Make the best use of nature's abundance to reduce our consumptive behaviour and dependence on non-renewable resources.

   • Choose plants that are renewable. Food waste, flower waste, and abundant wild plants are ideal if it is energy efficient to harvest them. Harvesting bark from pruned branches, sourced from orchards or tree surgeons is a good.

   • Coppicing trees for a renewable yield without harming the tree.

   • Some souses of dye plants are not sustainable. Such as dye plants that come from hardwood trees resulting in forest clearance.

   • Make sure you know where all your materials come from.

   • Consider where your energy for water heating is coming from. Consider how you can reduce the energy you use.

   • Consider where your water comes from. How can you minimise your water use.

6. Produce no waste: By valuing and making use of all the resources that are available to us, nothing goes to waste.

   • Reusing dye baths for paler colours

   • Turning dye baths in to inks and print pastes.

   • Using food waste from cafes such as avocado skins and flower waste from florists.

   • Harvest tree bark from fruit tree pruning.

   • Avoid creating contaminated water waste through careful consideration of dye processes and ingredients. Design from patterns to details: By stepping back, we can observe patterns in nature and society. These can form the backbone of our designs, with the details filled in as we go.

7. Integrate rather than segregate: By putting the right things in the right place, relationships develop between those things and they work together to support each other.

   • Connecting people together through craft. Making together, making connections. Working together in gardens and more labour intensive processes such as indigo extraction and large harvests.

   • Practice zoning. What activities require your attention every day? Position these at home. What activities only need weekly, monthly, or annual attention? These can be positioned further away. For example, in peak season coreopsis flowers need to be harvested every day, so I plant these right outside my front door. Madder is only harvested in large batches once or twice a year so I grow this in a garden further from home.

   • Growing at different levels. Madder is a low sprawling plant, so often I grow sunflowers in the madder bed in order to save on space.

8. Design from patterns to details: By stepping back, we can observe patterns in nature and society. These can form the backbone of our designs, with the details filled in as we go.

   • Working with seasonal flow. What is this season asking of me in this moment? Where is the energy in the plants during this season?

9. Use small and slow solutions: Small and slow systems are easier to maintain than big ones, making better use of local resources and producing more sustainable outcomes.

   • Small scale, human size production.

   • Build your processes slowly, testing new recipes with small amounts of fabric.

10. Use and value diversity: Diversity reduces vulnerability to a variety of threats and takes advantage of the unique nature of the environment in which it resides.

    • Aim to work with a variety of plants that are locally available throughout the seasons. I like to work with herbs such as rosemary, sage, and bay because they are reliably available all year round. There are challenges to seeking a non-toxic practice, and also seeking to create a wide spectrum of vibrant colours. This often leaves me reliant on particular plants that I can not grow, such as symplocos and indigo. This can be restricting if there is a limit to supply.

11. Use edges and value the marginal: The interface between things is where the most interesting events take place. These are often the most valuable, diverse and productive elements in the system.

    • Connecting people who come from different practices in natural dyeing, from growers, to weavers, and knitters. Working with plant dyes integrates many different processes.

    • When looking for dye plants, look for the ecological edges. The edges, the field edges, the waysides, the fences along industrial areas, and river sides.

    • Look for creative edge. This is where the opportunities are. Where plants, materials, and processes come together in unexpected ways. Look at where plant dyeing meets ink making. Or where plant dyeing meets weaving, or herbal medicine.

12. Creatively use and respond to change: We can have a positive impact on inevitable change by carefully observing, and then intervening at the right time.

    • Working with the seasons of the year.

    • Working with the seasons in our life.

If you are interested to explore this further, I run various courses in working with natural dyes and inks. Some online, and some from my studio in South Devon in the UK.

Propagating Dye Plants

Some dye plants such as rose petals, sage, and rosemary may already be growing in your garden or easily found locally. Other dye plants, such as madder, weld, or woad will only be found in the garden of a natural dyer, so the seeds and plants can be harder to find to start your garden.

I get my seeds and cuttings from a variety of different sources. Some of the best ones are:

Wild Garden Seed Company

For: Dyer’s Coreopsis, Dahlias, Dyer’s Chamomile, Hollyhock, Shades of Gold Marigolds, Hopi Black Sunflowers, Weld.

Grand Prismatic Seeds

For: Dyer’s Coreopsis, Dyer’s Chamomile, Hollyhock, Shades of Gold Marigolds, Hopi Black Sunflowers, Weld, madder, japanese indigo,

Wild Colours

For: Madder seeds (Rubia tinctoria), Dyers Chamomile seeds (Anthemis tinctoria), Dyers Coreopsis seeds (Coreopsis tinctoria), Japanese Indigo seeds (Persicaria tinctoria), Weld seeds (Reseda luteola), Woad seeds (Istasis Tinctora)

Propagation

I start most plants from seeds. One reason is because this is the cheapest way to get a good quantity of plants. I have also found that most dye plants are only commercially available in seed form because they are unusual.

In the spring, I sow the seeds of the annual plants that I like to dye with and any new biannual or perennial plants I would like to establish in the garden. Some plants such as woad, hollyhock, and weld will self seed across the garden, so I don’t always need to sow these seeds. However other plants such as marigold (tagetes), coreopsis, and japanese indigo (persicaria tinctoria) need to be sown every year.

l sow the seeds in module trays in March in the polytunnel. Alternatively, you can keep them on a sunny windowsill or in a greenhouse. I will pot the plants on in to larger pots after about a month, when the plants are handleable. This allows them to grow to a decent size before planting them out in the garden. I like to have planted everything out in the garden by mid-summer. Often, I find that plants that I don’t manage to plant until after mid summer will be leggy.

Some plants can be split by root or rhizome, such as madder (rubia tinctoria) and dahlias. These are best to split in the winter while the plants are dormant.

Some plants, such as sage and dyer’s chamomile will grow easily from a cutting. With these, I take a stem cutting that has plenty of root nodules in the spring and plant this directly in the ground. This works because I live in a damp place. If you live in a dry place, Leave your cuttings for a few weeks on the window sill in a jar of water to encourage the root growth before planting.

I love creating dye gardens. I have created four different dye gardens over the years. This spring, I will be creating a new dye garden near my studio in Devon. You are welcome to come and help me. On the 25th March, I am running a day for connecting with dye plants. Half the day will be for getting to know the wild dye plants that grow around us and the second half of the day will be looking at dye garden plants. We will sow some seeds and start to consider permaculture design principles we can apply to our dye gardens and dyeing processes. You can find out more about this day here.

Buddleia - A Yellow Dye

As the days grow longer and the plants mature, the butterflies are fluttering around. the flowers start to come out. Flowers are really fun to work with as they can give many colours, and not always the colour you expect. Buddleia is a great example of this as all the flowers, regardess of the colour of the petals, all give a yellow dye. This is one of our best wild sources of yellow in the UK. As the buddleia is so abundant on wasteland and industrial edges, no-one minds you picking the flowers, and there are always so many that there are plenty to share wth the butterflies and bees. As you pick the flowers, a bright yellow colour starts to spread across your hands. This dye is fantastic to bundle dye with because the colour releases quickly from the flowers. You can also make a stong yellow dye quite quickly with just a few flowers. Sometimes when running workshops in London, I will pick the flowers at the train station on the way to the workshop venue.

You can dry the flowers to store the colour for using throughout the year. I find that it is important to dry the flowers quickly so that they don’t lose their colour. It they turn grown when drying, the colour won’t be as potent.

Harvest moon

Being present to receive the gifts of the land.
We live in circles.
Finding the old circles.
Woods, river, sea, river, woods.
By the call of the cuckoo, and then the blackberry.
The drum beats and seasons pass.
Leaves fall as harvest rise.

Twist, Stitch, Scrumple, Fold, Turn, Bind, or Clamp

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Whether you choose to twist, stitch, crumple, fold, turn, bind, or clamp the fabric, there are infinite possibilities of patterns with shibori.

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Shibori is a traditional Japanese resist technique for creating patterns on fabric. Itajime is a quick and simple shibori technique of clamping folded fabric between two shaped blocks, fastening with a clamp, or string. The effect is satisfyingly immediate, enabling you to create dramatic geometric patterns in minutes. As well as using scrap wood to cut interesting shape blocks, it is also fun to use found objects. Buttons can be used for small circles, and jar lids are effective for large circles. Clothes pegs and bulldog clips can also make small marks with surprising effects. Bind thread around screws and baking beads for circular patterns, or simply tie the fabric in knots for a rippled effect. If you have nothing to hand, simply tying string around concertina folded fabric has beautiful effects.

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In Japan, the shibori folded fabric is traditionally dipped in an indigo dye vat to create deep pure blue. The indigo is extracted from various plants that grow around the world, mainly Japanese indigo, Indigo Fera Tinctora, and Woad. The indigo is not water soluble, so a chemical or biological reaction is needed to extract the blue colour and set it in the cloth. Originally this was found through dipping fabric in a vat of indigo and stale urine (ammonia). The fabric would come out green and then oxidise in the air turning blue. Today, There are many different methods of creating an indigo vat. Michel Garcia has developed a natural method called the 1-2-3 vat combining an alkali (lime) and a reducing agent (fructose) with the indigo.

It is important to use natural fibres, such as linen, hemp, or organic cotton as the synthetic fibres will not bind with the indigo.  Hand woven fabric lends itself well as the weave is looser allowing the dye to seep through the folds, achieving an even colour across the fabric, on the other hand, texture can really add to a design. Using this simple technique, of shibori and indigo, you can make yourself linen cushion covers, geometric scarves, and breathe new life in to old clothes.

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Blend In To The Woods

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Dye your clothes with an autumn palette extracted from woodland trees and hedgerow plants, and blend in to the woods.

As the nights lengthen, the temperature drops, and the energy of trees and plants goes down into the roots and outward into the seeds. This is the time for gathering the bounty of fruits, nuts, roots, and barks for natural dyeing, as well as food and medicines.

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Wild edges of hedges and woodlands are abundant with native berries. Drinking a stock of blackberries, elderberries, rowan, guelder rose, and hawthorn berries fortify our immune systems ready for the harsh winter months. Notice how they stain your skin. These berries dye fabric pink, purple, orange, and grey.

Growing in amongst the hedge is lady’s bedstraw, a straggly plant that produces a red dye from the roots. Dig up one year old dock roots and dandelion roots for golden yellow colours, and a few burdock roots to roast for your dinner. Along the riverbank, find meadowsweet roots for a black dye, this could be confused with a young bramble if not for it’s distinctive red stem, alternate tiny leaves and large leaves, and the distinctive smell of antiseptic.

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Along the river, the Alder tree grows. When the tree is cut, the wood turns from white to red as if bleeding, this red dye can be extracted from the bark. In the woods, look for trees rich with tannin. The mighty oak offers a golden brown dye obtained from the tannin filled galls and small pieces of bark. This can be transformed to a black ink with the addition of iron oxide. All parts of the walnut tree are used for dyeing. The outer green cases of the nuts produce deep browns and black. Apple and cherry barks offer soft pinks and oranges. Birch bark gives tan, brown and sometimes pink.

Curiously, many natural dye plants have healing properties for the skin. Meadowsweet and oak can be used as antiseptic. Alder leaves are put in the shoes of those walking great distances to ease their weary feet. Apple is a powerful cleanser of wounds as the juice restores skin tissue. Lay the internal side of Birch bark against the skin to relieve muscle pain. Dried Lady's bedstraw is stuffed in mattresses to repel insects, and the roots are used to dye sheets to prevent bedsores. By dyeing our clothes with these trees and plants, we are healing and protecting our skin with a rich array of autumn colours that help us to blend into the season.

Originally written for LEAF! Magazine, produced by Common Ground and The Woodlands Trust in October 2016