Natural Dye

When the opportunity to take a week-long natural dye workshop came up at university, I of course decided to take part and learn from some of the best. I did call into question my decision though when one of the first items we were required to ‘find’ was a large heap of (pardon the French) cow shit. Apparently the enzymes clean the fabric so it is better prepared to absorb the natural colours, although I personally feel it also had something to do with a crazy Indian having a laugh with the foreigners. So, after allowing some French exchange girls to very kindly take this task on, we went to the local flower market, vegetable market and fabric shop to collect the rest of our shopping list of “anything and everything natural”. So we showed up to the dye studio on day 2 with bags of beetroot, carrots, red grapes, pomegranate…as well as red onion skins confusedly donated by a nice veg man, and a whole collection of red and orange discarded flowers (the locals watched in amusement as we climbed and gathered from behind the market, being cheapskate students).

Buying fabrics in India was like a dream come true for me, and what a shame that I had to spend the afternoon looking at different silks for class! Hundreds of colours, weights and thread counts stacked the shelves on rolls. I was like a kid in a candy shop. It therefore broke me a little to take my meter of beautiful Indian silk and leave it to soak in cow dung all day and night while I prepared the dyes.

Making the dyes felt a little like being back in home economics in school or playing at witches and mixing potions. I stained my hands yellow picking all the petals off of the flowers, and made a mess chopping up beetroot. Boiling the different ingredients in water (five times the weight of the vegetable) made the whole studio smell like a very peculiar kitchen, but it was exciting to see how the different colours appeared - with some quite surprising results! Our lecturer, being the intelligent yet odd man we came to know him to be, informed us to taste and smell each dye, insisting that there is a strong link between the senses and the colours produced. This should help us in future when trying to create a specific colour.

Day 3 was when the fun started with cutting the silk and cotton into small sample pieces and testing how the dyes coloured the fabrics. It was a crazy organised mess of boiling the dyes, wetting the fabrics, soaking them, rinsing and hanging out to dry (in the melting sun might I add). We had colours of purple from red grapes, green from pomegranate fruit, but a dark yellow-orange from the skin, and brown from red onion skin. At this point, we were instructed to take the pH of each dye which would help indicate which would work at which wouldn't – generally anything over 7 won’t colour.

I really enjoyed using the mordents most, we used three different; Alum, Copper and Ferrous. Using chemicals took the feel of being in potion class to a whole new level! These help the colour fastness and can create a very interesting range of colours from one dye as the fabrics change when placed in each; alum generally makes the colour much brighter while ferrous makes it much darker, even black or navy in some cases. It was exciting and eye opening to see just how many colours can be extracted and created from just one plant, and how much the earth has to offer.  I love the idea of being able to fully create my own environmentally friendly dyes and fabrics in the future.