Saturday was dark and rainy, the sort of day that you spend indoors huddled up, moving slowly, drinking warm liquids, binging on movies or a series, and making stuff. Just the day before, I discovered the Craft in America documentary series, which is probably how I came to the conclusion that it was a good …
When I last wrote here about dyeing with plants it was June and I had been experimenting with fresh coreopsis flowers. Despite reports that cotton fibres CAN NOT be dyed with coreopsis flowers, I was able to use the gleanings from my garden successfully without using mordants (a fixative that allows the dye to bind …
Late last summer I tossed a few flowers from the garden into jars and covered them with boiling water to make a “colour tea.” I then tossed in little bits of cotton thread to see what would happen. This wasn’t about anything that I had read in a book. I didn’t use any mordants. I …
Header hand drawn by Davin Risk Over the last year I’ve posted about some of my experiments in dyeing fabrics and threads with plants gleaned from my garden to be used in my winter, off-season stitching projects. Since then I have expanded beyond my own garden to use plant materials foraged from the world beyond. …
Mention of our mid-June desert road trip on Instagram this morning has compelled me to share a little nugget of knowledge that I gleaned on the trip. The plant in this photo is Ephedra (I don’t know which species as there are several), commonly known as Mormon tea. Those of you who are not from …
It’s already mid-December and I have finally got around to harvesting what remains of the ginger root (Zingiber officinale) that I grew in a container in my Zone 5(b-ish) garden this past summer. Yes, this spicy, tropical herb can be grown in a cold climate, and with minimal effort.
Last summer I resolved to try and make further use of the plants that I grow by employing them as natural textile dyes. When their season was through, I did a few experiments, dying various fabric scraps with the burgundy leaves and immature blooms of the large false roselle plants I had grown that year. …