Natural Dyeing with Somerset Guild
- May 17, 2019
- by Debbie Tomkies
Just back from a lovely weekend with the members of Somerset Guild of Weavers, Spinners & Dyers. Saturday was a talk and sales tables and on Sunday we had a fun time exploring natural dyes.
Starting with primary colours we created red with madder, yellow with weld and blue with Saxon blue. If you’ve never used Saxon blue before it’s a natural blue dye made with natural indigo but formulated into a dye liquor that will dye protein fibres beautiful shades of turquoise/teal blue. As it’s mordanted with alum there’s no need for an indigo vat which makes it great for easy greens, purples and violets. You can buy Saxon blue and see the lovely shades it produces here.
Our next batch of samples was orange from weld with madder; green using weld and Saxon blue; indigo using Saxon blue and logwood and violet using Saxon blue and cochineal.
With our rainbow of samples prepared, it was over to the group to put their imaginations to work! We had fabric, fibres, all manner of threads, silk, wool, cotton and linens – all in all an exciting array of dyed pieces. So exciting that I didn’t get many pics!
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Thank you to the Guild for inviting us and being such lovely hosts 🙂
