Posts Tagged ‘colour’
harvesting colour – the formula for colour
My first effort towards my project is to understand what materials I will need. From my early reading, I have learned the end colour for any project using natural dyes is much more than just adding plant material to water. A final colour is the result of so many factors.
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My simple formula for this complex symphony is:
final colour = source water + utensils + plant material (dyestuff) + mordent + colour modifier + textile fibre
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No doubt, I will discover I have omitted some important element.
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In my next posts, I will consider each of these elements and talk about the specific items I intend to use.
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For example, I will need some textile fibre to dye. My intention is to dye small amounts of material for use in various weaving projects. In my weaving, I use both thread and strips of textiles.
At this early stage, I have three materials I want to dye. I have a small quantity of unspun fleece obtained a couple of years ago during our trip to Upper Canada Village in Ontario. I also have three old cotton shirts – I loved to wear these before they became stained – perhaps I will wear them again, repurposed in rainbow colour! And I have just purchased a meter of white silk (at $37 per meter, it is a splurge!). I will have to do some preparatory cleaning to each of these materials before I use them in my dyeing projects.
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some materials for dyeing … a meter of silk, three shirts, and a bundle of unspun wool … the shirts have already seen their share of accidental dyeing !!!
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Behind the scenes, I am finding poetic inspiration as I learn this craft of dyeing. Eventually I will be brave enough to show my poems to you.
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Copyright 2014 Jane Tims
harvesting colour – a reference library
To begin my poetry project ‘harvesting colour’, I have created a small reference library. I will keep my library by my desk in the loft I use as my studio. I wrote most of the poems for my ‘growing and gathering’ manuscript there.
on my desk
To decide what books to order, I followed some suggestions made by Pia, an experienced dyer (follow her dyeing adventures at Colour Cottage – www.colourcottage.wordpress.com).
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I started with three books:
Rita Buchanan, 1999, A Dyer’s Garden (Dover Publications)
Jenny Dean, 2010, Wild Color: The Complete Guide to Making and Using Natural Dyes (Watson-Guptill Publications)
India Flint, 2010, Eco Colour: Botanical Dyes for Beautiful Textiles (Interweave Press)
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I am sure I will be adding others as my project goes on, but for now these books have lots of great advice for a beginning dyer. Along with these books, I have my entire library of illustrated botanical guides, including floras of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and North America to help me identify the plants I will need.
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my growing dyers library
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Roaming through these books as an ‘armchair dyer’ reminds me of the thrill of looking over seed catalogues while the snows of winter are falling.
Although I have not read any of these books in their entirety, I will give you a brief description of each:
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Rita Buchanan, 1999, A Dyer’s Garden (Dover Publications)
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Rita Buchanan’s A Dyer’s Garden is a straightforward guide to using plants for various cottage craft purposes. The guide includes information on using plants as dyes, as well as for stuffing, soap-making and a source of fragrance. The chapter on dyes provides a step by step method, as well as an in-depth description of various plants useable for dyes. I love the black and white line drawings for some of these plants. The book includes practical information throughout on growing these plants and on the history of their use.
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Jenny Dean, 2010, Wild Color: The Complete Guide to Making and Using Natural Dyes (Watson-Guptill Publications)
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Jenny Dean’s book, Wild Color, is a riot of colour. Easy to flip through, it has detailed sections on various stages of the dyeing process. A useful feature for me will be her illustrated guide to some common plants used as dyestuffs. I particularly like her colour charts of results obtained with various dyestuff, mordants and modifiers. She also includes some background material on the history of dyers and dyeing.
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India Flint, 2010, Eco Colour: Botanical Dyes for Beautiful Textiles (Interweave Press)
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Eco Colour by India Flint is a well-illustrated book, full of photos of the author’s work with plants and fabrics. You can tell she has been there every step of the way – included in the photos are her handwritten notes. She describes well the process of dyeing and provides practical information. She also includes lots of examples of colour transfers (eco prints) – leaves are applied directly to the cloth to make colour prints. The book includes an extensive list of plants sorted by the colours they produce.
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I can hardly wait to thoroughly read these three books. Besides looking for a step by step approach, I will be on the hunt for words from the dyer’s vocabulary to include in my poems.
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Another resource I will use for my project will be the Internet. I read the blogs of a few dyers regularly, to learn something from their experiences, to get their advice and to better know these people who turn their appreciation of colour in nature into capturing colour. I’m sure you will enjoy these blogs about dyeing and fabrics as much as I do:
http://colourcottage.wordpress.com
http://whatzitknitz.wordpress.com/
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Now that I have my reference library underway, I am gathering ideas about what I will need to begin my project. My next post will show you some of the items I will be using.
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Copyright 2014 Jane Tims
harvesting colour
Recently I was awarded an artsnb (New Brunswick Arts Board) Creations grant. My six month project will be to write a book-length poetry manuscript about the experience of using plant dyes for colouring textiles.
The poems will find their inspiration in the activities of collecting plants, extracting their dyes and using them to colour woven fabric.
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one of the plants I will be using is Tansy (Tanacetum vulgare) – it grows throughout New Brunswick and can be used to make yellow and olive dyes
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Writing these poems, in many ways, should echo my previous project ‘growing and gathering’. I will do some research about a particular plant, then go forth and find it. For the ‘growing and gathering’ project I had a lot of fun exploring various areas of the province for the plants I needed, so I know I will love this part of the experience. It will be when I get the plant material home that the differences between the two projects will become clear. With ‘growing and gathering’, writing poems about picking berries seemed second nature to me since I’ve spent a lot of my life in berry fields.
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some of the ingredients for a ‘growing and gathering’ salad
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With ‘harvesting colour’, I will be learning a craft new to me. I’ll be trying to manage the complex alchemy of “pot type plus source water plus plant material plus mordent plus receiving material”. Lots of chemistry and a few colour tragedies, I’m certain. And discovery, as purple plants become yellow dye. I hope to combine making plant dyes with my weaving, an activity I find totally relaxing and steadying.
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some of my weaving results over the years … it will be fun to see what colours my project will bring to my weaving
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So where will the poems come from and what will they say? I’ll be looking for metaphors for human experience and emotion. I’ll try to embed ideas about reconnection with nature and about cultural expression through decorating fabric. I’ll use words from botany and chemistry, and a rich colour dictionary. I can hardly wait to explore all the words for yellow, and green, and red.
I want to write poems about ‘saddening’ the colour by adding a pinch of salt, and ruining a dye lot by forgetting to tend it well. I’ll write about oak leaf imprints on cloth, and the different yellows created with apple bark and poplar leaf. I’d also like to write poems about the ordinary life experience of plant dyes – grass stains on knees, the grey Choke-cherry jelly bag, the Cranberry stain on the tablecloth.
I’ll be presenting at least some of my poems here and I’ll certainly be sharing my experiences. I’ll continue to present my virtual travel, novel writing and watercolour posts, but I plan to devote Friday’s post each week to ‘harvesting colour’. Hope you visit regularly to follow me in my project!
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Copyright 2014 Jane Tims
the colour of October #2 (Tansy yellow)
So many colours! The orange of the big pumpkin on our doorstep. The reds and yellows of the Red Maple leaves in piles under our feet. The bright white of the moon this month. The golden colour of the needles of the Tamarack now falling with every breath of wind.
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The colour that has inspired me this week is the yellow of Tansy (Tansy vulgare L.) still bright along the road in Fredericton. The flowers are like brilliant yellow buttons.
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I couldn’t duplicate the colour with the yellows in my watercolour palette, but after layers of alternating yellow and white, I have realised how wonderful the yellows of nature really are!
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October 27, 2013 ‘Tansy’ Jane Tims
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In a month’s time, the bright yellow heads of the Tansy will be black!
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Copyright 2013 Jane Tims
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