Moving on

The plan was to blog once a week... I didn't get it together that soon. It is taking a while to get into this dyeing process and figure out what to do. I have to read up on it, think about it, decide what to try next, whether to try a mordant... photograph the plants and the process, upload the photos. It's a lot.

Any way, here I am, and I have tried a few new things. They all have to sit and mature, or cook or rot or whatever they do for several weeks. I will have a front porch covered with little glass jars soon. People who come to visit are intrigued. Nobody else that I have come across on this island dyes with plant matter. You would think that someone had tried it. Maybe that died out generations ago. I will have to do some research.

This is what I have tried this time:
Bougainvillea flowers
Tan-tan tree leaves and seed pods

The techniques I have tried come from the Eco Colour book by India Flint that I mentioned last time.
I have tried the Ice-flower technique, where you freeze flowers that have a more subtle color and then thaw them quickly in warm water together with a pieces of fabric. This shock therapy may make the flowers release their color molecules on to the fabric. We are hopeful.
Some flowers, with a stronger color, were put in a jar with water to cook in the sun for a month to test whether they yield a color solution that can be used to dye with.

I have also tried cold bundling with the Tan-tan leaves and seed pods.


The Bougainvillea bush is everywhere around me. It is very beautiful and flowers profusely all the time. The colors of the blossoms go from light pink to fuchsia to red and orange. I have picked flowers off some of the bushes in my yard.

This one is reddish-orange pink

This one is light pink

Here are the flowers

The light pink flowers were put in the freezer for future ice-flower prints

The flowers with strong color were stuffed in a jar with water to sit and percolate on the porch to see if they would generate a liquid to dye with later

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The Tan-tan trees are basically weed trees that grow everywhere.

They have leaves, little green balls that are blossoms (I think) and seed pods at the same time.

I wrapped pods and leaves up in a piece of linen cloth.

This little bundle will now sit outside for a month and do it's thing...

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What I have to do next is go to the second hand store and find some equipment such as a big pot, so that I can boil things. A lot of dyeing happens in hot water after all. I might also find interesting re-use cloth. A trip to the fabric store, such as it is, will also be required. I have no white cotton fabric. Ideally it should be organic cotton, but that may be impossible here. I ordered some silk on line. The way the mail works here, it could take a while to arrive, or not! I don't know if linen is the best material to use, but I happen to have a lot of it, in the form of a hand woven old worn table cloth from my father's family. I am hoping for interesting results. And if not, like India says, dye over it!

First post, February 8, 2013

Welcome to my new and only blog! It's the start of a new adventure for me, though I have thought about it for some time.

I am hoping that sharing what I do in the field of dyeing will keep me focused on the project and by writing about it, I will see more clearly where I am going.

I actually have two dyeing projects. One is already started. I am dyeing with rust. I have achieved some interesting results which I will report on later.
Project number two is a new one, and I will work on it while I am at our winter spot in St. Croix, US Virgin Islands. I am planning to find out the dyeing properties of leaves, seeds, bark, flowers and other plant parts of things that grow right here around us. There is a lot of that, since we live in a rain forest area. 

So, here we are!

Yesterday, I filled five jars with fabric and various items, hoping to achieve some interesting results in the form of dyed fabrics. This is a very intuitive and haphazard method. It is described as "Solar Dyeing" in the book "Eco Colour" by India Flint. This is a great book for those who are interested in dyeing with natural materials. It has an enormous amount of information. I'm starting simple. 
My five jars will now sit in the sun for a month!!

Here are the five jars.
This is what is in them, left to right:
1. Silk fabric with sorrel (from the local farm market)
2. Linen fabric with seeds from a red leaf spinach plant (also from farm market)
3. Silk with lemongrass, my own plant!
4. Linen with coffee and two rusty bottle caps, just to experiment
5. Linen with fresh spinach leaves (from the grocery store, probably from Florida)

Right away we can determine that I have not stayed within my own declared parameters for this project, since the plant stuff is mostly not from my immediate surrounding and some of the stuff is not even plants! I will improve.

Here are the most promising jars, after only one day. Left sorrel and right red leaf spinach. I wonder if I should have taken the labels off the jars? Is it the heat of the sun I need, or the rays, I wonder? Time will tell. We are experimenting here.

This is what the Sorrel looks like:

Sorrel, if you look it up, is actually the name used here in the Caribbean, for a drink made of the calyces or sepals of the Hibiscus flower. It is fragrant citrusy, and spicy and has a wonderful magenta color. That is what I hope my silk fabric piece will turn out like.