April

Wendy and Clare joined Carolyn on 26th March for a morning of dyeing experiments.
Carolyn dyed with daffodil heads, ornamental currant and frozen dahlia heads. These had all been simmered and steeped overnight in a separate pot of water.

Commercially spun undyed wool had been mordanted with alum prior to dyeing and one skein mordanted with copper.

2 gram skeins were simmered in the 3 dye baths for an hour.
Then individual skeins were simmered for 5 minutes in modified dye baths. The modifiers were acid (distilled malt vinegar), alkaline (washing soda solution) and iron water (rust nails in one third distilled vinegar and two thirds water and left to steep).
In all cases the alkaline modifier deepened the colour achieved, the acid modifier lightened the colour achieves and the iron water modifier produced a brown colour.

Dahlias

Dahlias

Flowering currant

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Daffodils

The photos show (from left to right) - basic colour, with alkaline modifier, with acid modifier, with iron modifier and copper mordant.
A good day's dyeing!

Winterbourne Dye Garden
Winterbourne plan to plant a garden with woad, madder, weld, chamomile,greenweed, narcissus, rhubarb, coreopsis, St John's wort, cosmos and dahlias and yew. These plants will be used as dyes and samples available for groups to study. There is to be an exhibition of dyed samples and work dyed using the plants.