Planning a dye garden for myself

If I'm lucky this is what we'll get done this coming summer. I forgot to label the water barrel (bottom right) and the composter (the yellow and brown box at the top), and the small shed (empty white box at the top).

Medieval plant dyes (and modern)

As long as you have red, yellow and blue you can mix and match to make almost any colour. Some of these dye plants are more resistant to fading in sunlight or getting washed out of the fibre than others.

Any plant name that is in bold is a perennial (or biennial).

Red - 

Medieval European- Madder (Rubia tinctoria), Lady's Bedstraw/Cleavers (Galium verum)

Other- Amaranth (Hopi red dye), Dyer's Alkanet, Henna (Lawsonia inermis) (shrub), Joe Pye Weed, Dyer's Woodruff (Asperula tinctoria), Brazilwood (tree)

Orange - 

Medieval European- any yellow + Madder, or just Madder itself

Other- Dyer's Coreopsis (Coreopsis tinctoria), Orange Cosmos, Black Eyed Susan (Rudbeckia fulgida 'Goldstrum') (edges into dull yellow)

Dye, you fool!

Madder and dyer's chamomile. Dyer's chamomile smells just like chamomile tea, so my daughter didn't hate this as much as weld. Thank goodness she wasn't around for the woad.

I always used to get orange out of madder, but I've got the hang of it now. This is the madder with dyer's chamomile. The picture doesn't do the colour any justice. It's a quite nice tangerine.

My Love/Hate Affair with Weaving

This picture (above) is my latest project. I'm trading handwoven fabric for seamstress-ing. I am not very good at sewing, and my daughter will only come to medieval events with me if a) there is archery, and b) she can wear an Italian Ren dress. Archery is easy. We have the supplies and lots of events have the opportunity. However. I cannot sew. Working flat and trying to imagine 3D is pretty much impossible for my brain. If I had a dress dummy I could drape it, but alas. So, enough 18" wide twill to make a Norse apron dress here we go!

I love the repetitive action of weaving. It's very meditative. I find it difficult to weave in the summer, but in the winter I love it. I'm also a total dork, and I like to put on the Lord of the Rings movies (not the Hobbit- those movies were designed to sell video games and toys, especially the first one), and sit there and pretend I'm an elf. I have to say that the new tv series which has been announced is like Schrodinger's Catastrophe... Anyways.

Natural dyes

I've been experimenting with natural dyes this week. I bought a 100% lambswool twill blanket at a thrift store for $6 and made it into a Skjolenham hood and an Anglo-Saxon jacket. Unfortunately, it was beige. I dislike beige. Intensely. So, I thought that I could try re-dyeing it.

That was this week's experiment.

I tried the hood first because it was smaller, and I would be less unhappy if it failed horribly. I used powdered weld extract, and it came out a gorgeous dark spring green. Considering I used weld to colour and alum as a mordant it should have come out yellow. I suspect that the original mordant on the blanket was copper (which turns weld green).

Next was the jacket, and it wasn't as much of a success. I suspect that the larger volume of cloth in my kettle (ie. canning pot) made the movement of both mordant and dye a bit more constricted. As well, I was using ground up madder root, and I possibly didn't let it 'extract itself' long enough before putting in the cloth on the first attempt. So, it came out a bit motley. I washed it thoroughly in the washing machine and tried again. It came out a much more uniform colour. It may have gotten a bit too warm as it has an orange-ish tinge to it, also, the probably use of copper as the first dye mordant would have done that as well. I did find my dye thermometer afterwards, though, which is good. I won't have to guess at any future temperatures for dyeing.

The joys of moving.

With this warm weather my saffron popped up. I hope they can weather this weather and last until fall... *sigh* I've nick-named that grey squirrel that lives in my backyard 'Stew'... Because that's what I'm going to make him into eventually when I snap because he's eating my saffron bulbs and other things that he likes... The chicken wire is slowing him down a bit, thankfully.