Cooking fabric ….

…. otherwise known as dyeing.   I used to dye fabric on a very regular basis when I worked mostly with batik methods.  It has been a long, long while since then.  In those days though I mostly used chemical dyes,  procion, which, whilst producing wonderfully vivid colours were not kindly to our environment.  Under the influence of India Flint I have been rediscovering the joy of messing about with colouring using nature to assist.  The results, thus far, are muted in tone and depth of colour.  I like this a lot.  I shall be experimenting further, surrounded out back as I am with loads of  ‘weeds’ etc., plenty of alkanet and nettles so am hoping for some delicate shades of reds and greens.  At this moment in time, conkers – in and out of husks, are bubbling away on the cooker top downstairs – for some reason they make an amazing array of bubbles ………

The clipping, tying, bundling of cloth to effect patterns needs refining somewhat – tis early days.  Results so far:

These pieces of cotton and linen are much pinker than they appear on screen – done with avocado skins and stones and a fruit vinegar mordant:

Silk cooked in turkish tea with fruit vinegar mordant:

and linen and cotton:

and cotton showing a little bit of tying which worked:

Silk cooked in the tea, this time  with copper mordant (I wrapped the silk around some copper discs I have):

Just to show the contrast: left with copper, right with fruit mordants:

Finally, this little lot are a mixture of cotton and linen, wrapped around bits of copper sitting in the tea – I had heated and steeped them for some time on the stove before cooling and deciding to leave them in a jar outside for about a couple of weeks now I think :

I will bring them in soon as the sun has not made much of an appearance for a while now – so any chance of solar heating has gone methinks.