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.