Showing posts with label woad. Show all posts
Showing posts with label woad. Show all posts

Friday, 9 November 2018

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).

Friday, 2 November 2018

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 EuropeanMadder (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)


Friday, 19 October 2018

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.