Thursday, August 9, 2007

Natural dying

One of my favorite things to do is natural dying on wool fabric I use in my quilts, but this year, I am also dying wool yarn to use when I go to New Mexico in Sept. and spend a week on the Navajo reservation learning to weave from Sarah Natani, an elderly Navajo woman that has been having workshops on her sheep ranch for many years. My husband and I both will be learning to weave the "Navajo" way. I've been researching it and I'm not sure a week will be enough time to learn!
(pictures are reversed, I'm still learning this Blog thing!)
I began this spring dying with the daffodils in my yard and my employees yard. The wool fabric on the right was dyed from them. The fabric and wool yarn to the left were dyed from dandelions (I have a good crop of them in my yard). The yarn is a wonderful chartreuse, it is 85% wool and 15% mohair and grabs the dye wonderfully and more quickly than the wool fabric.


The rust color wool was dyed from onion skins, the lighter color (fabric and yarn) I dyed in early spring, the darker, rust color was dyed recently with Vadalia onion skins. The last fabric to the left is cotton. I get a much deeper color with wool (I use Alum for mordant, there are much better mordants for cotton).



2 comments:

Deb Hardman said...

Makes me wish I were there picking black walnuts out of a strange, but nice lady's yard with you.

The onion skin really turned out rich. I like the pale yellow of the daffodils too. Did you use just the heads? Are you going to try marigolds or anything else this summer?

Wish I could come play with you!

Good job on blog posting! It'll get easier once your DSL is in!

Granny Fran said...

So glad that Deb H linked us to your blog. I am so excited to see your natural dyed wool. Aren't the colors wonderful? I haven't done it for years but still have all my books and samples. Maybe I need to do some more wool dyeing, this time for quilts. You will love studying with a Navajo weaver. My studies were with a Navajo woman in Boulder who taught spinning, dyeing, and weaving, in the Navajo way, at the CU Henderson Museum.

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