Dyeplants – Damselfly's Delights

Making While the Sun Shines

April 29, 2021 damselflysdelights2 Comments

A whole month whipped past me when I wasn’t looking! How does that happen? The weather was mostly quite lovely but not exceptionally warm especially at night. I’ve been slaving away either in the garden or in the studio and reading books when I get too tired to work any more. I haven’t been especially active online and am falling way behind on social media. Oh well! This is usually the busiest time of year for me anyhow because the garden needs lots of work after the winter to get it ready for the growing season. Thom is having trouble with his elbow (possibly tennis elbow due to injury, not playing tennis!) so his level of assistance is reduced from the usual. At least my back and wrists are holding out pretty well and I’m being very careful not to overtax anything. Exercise is great but we have to be aware of doing damage to our aging bodies. It takes a lot longer to heal after 70! It used to be me with all the ouchies but recently I’ve been fine and Thom has not. It’s a tough job but somebody has got to keep things going around here.

My dye garden is all planted now.

From the foreground and following along the narrow curving bed there’s dyer’s coreopsis, marigolds, perennial coreopsis, madder, dyer’s chamomile, more madder, Japanese indigo and a couple of weld plants I left in from last year. Here’s a better look at the baby indigo.

So hopefully there will be some dyeing going on later this summer when these guys grow up. Although last week I already enjoyed a day of dyeing some fabric that I wanted to sew, but with Procion MX dyes this time instead of botanical ones.

The colours are a little off: the blue hemp canvas is a deeper teal and the murky brown rayon/linen is more saturated too. The dyes “broke” on the latter fabric for some reason. I know that I did stir it as much as I could manage with so much heavy fabric. At least I was wise enough to divide the 6 yards into 2 three-yard lengths and used two buckets but I think the plum dye has a tendency of splitting up into its component pure dye colours so the fabric came out a plummy brown patterned with bluish-grey. It’s reasonably consistent though and I quite like the effect. The hemp canvas was also 3 yards and it was heavier weight too but it dyed exceptionally evenly, but perhaps lighter than I expected. Dyeing is always an adventure and you can never really predict how it will go. All of these pieces are already cut out for garments and I’ve started to sew the teal canvas into Muna and Broad’s Willandra Pants. The rayon/linen will become a Sew Liberated Lichen Duster for me and yet another Elbe Textiles Sanders Button-Up shirt for Thom. These fabrics have been lurking about in my stash for at least 15 years and I even have enough thread, interfacing and buttons (recycled from an old shirt) for everything. So nice to use stuff up. I’m very grateful for my copious stash because I’m still trying to avoid shopping as much as possible. Even though we finally got our first Covid jabs a couple of weeks ago the local situation with the more virulent variants is quite dire. Better to be safe than sorry, right?

So I guess I never posted the last Sanders Button-Up I made, did I?

It was hard to get a perfect photo because Thom put it on right away and wore it every day for the better part of a week! Guess that means it’s a keeper, huh? The fabric is a cross-weave linen in navy and natural tan. This time I increased some of the seam allowances so I could make flat-fell seams instead of relying on serging to finish them. It worked out very well so I’ll probably be modifying the pattern accordingly. I’ve already downsized the cuffs and took off half of the 2″ that I originally lengthened the sleeves. He loves the pockets on this shirt a lot because they are nice and deep and his glasses don’t fall out. The back has a little shaping and the cute little hanging loop.

I also cut out a cropped Helen’s Closet Pona Jacket in another dyed fabric, linen canvas dyed in madder and cutch several years ago. It’s thick but drapier than the plaid denim I made my first Pona out of. Instead of the cropped sleeves I went with the longer version. I figure I can always roll them up if I want them shorter but you can’t add length that doesn’t exist. So I have a bunch of garments all cut out now and waiting for their turn at the machines.

Do you like my new orange-on-brown tags from the Dutch Label Shop? They’re very similar to my old lime-green-on-black ones but I think they will blend better with warmer coloured garments like my soon-to-be Pona jacket. I still have lots of the first ones left but it’s nice to have a new option to play with.

I’ve also finished knitting another pair of socks for Thom but they’re currently drying from their post-needle bath so you’ll have to wait for the scoop. I haven’t really had any knitting mojo lately so it’s nice to actually finish a project. They are just plain so I can read while I knit which is obviously the secret to getting it done! However, I’m becoming interested again in knitting a cowl from a really pretty skein of merino and silk from Seawall Fibres (Nova Scotia) that I bought in 2018 at Knit City.

It’s not exactly the right time of year for a cowl but who cares? It’ll probably take me until it gets cold again to finish it anyhow. More on this project when (or if) it becomes an actual project.

I will leave you with this glorious bit of hanami, aka cherry blossom appreciating, from our neighbourhood. The blossoms of the plums and cherries were very intense this year, maybe because it was still pretty cold at night. Petals are falling like pink snow now though!

For such as these I make an exception to my aversion to the colour pink!

Dye!

July 29, 2020 damselflysdelights4 Comments

Summer has finally smacked us upside the head! Happily it’s still cool enough at night to enable us to sleep well but the days are quite hot, at least for here in Vancouver. Obviously this is a lesson in “be careful what you wish for”, right? I’m alternating my time picking produce, watering everything in sight and working up in the Sweat Shop (aka my upstairs studio). Oh, and dyeing fabrics on the deck with dyeplants from my garden and older dyes, mordants and assists from the dye studio. It’s been an adventure!

I started by chopping off my Japanese indigo plants.

Japanese indigo (Persicaria tinctoria aka Polygonum tinctorium)

I decided to try a new-to-me technique for dyeing with some of this bounty as explained in John Marshall’s “Singing the Blues” book (p.29), dyeing cellulose fibres with fresh indigo. I had a 2-metre length of a lightweight hemp fabric, scoured in Synthrapol and soda ash. After stripping the leaves carefully from the stems I weighed them so they were pretty much equal to the wof. I dissolved thiourea dioxide in hot water and left it to cool. In the craft blender I lightly packed leaves and covered them in ice water and blended them into slurry which went into a stainless steel pan. Repeated until all the leaves are blended and added calx and the thiox to the last blending. The results looked pretty weird, all curdled and frothy, but it properly turned green in about 10 minutes.

Then I added the damp fabric and carefully squooshed it around in the vat for about 10 minutes. The fabric turned blue when I pulled it out, rinsed in clear water and hung it up for awhile but I didn’t think it was very dark so I repeated the whole procedure since I had plenty of indigo leaves. I know that it gets a lot lighter after the fabric is finally finished. Also this year’s indigo isn’t very intense with the indigo precursors because it was such a cloudy/rainy spring and early summer. Less sun means less blue!

Final results, fresh Japanese indigo on hemp

The blue is quite light and blotchy (and nearly impossible to photograph accurately!) but I think the fresh process has possibilities. I had lots of leaves left over afterward so I dried them. One day I’ll combine several years’ worth of dried leaves and see what I can get from them. There should also be at least one or two more harvests before cold weather kills the plants.

There was still plenty more plants in the dye garden to play with so I chopped down the weld plant that was more than 2 metres tall and Thom buzzed it through his chipper/shredder for me. I decided to dye a second 2 metre piece of the hemp fabric and mordanted it in tannin and then alum/soda ash using instructions from “The Art and Science of Natural Dyes” by Joy Boutrup and Catharine Ellis. The weld was simmered for an hour and the plant matter sieved out before adding the fabric and a small amount of chalk (calcium carbonate) since our water is very soft. Again the fabric didn’t turn out as dark as I expected but it’s quite a pretty soft yellow. I’m beginning to think it’s the hemp which was unbleached that didn’t take a strong dye colour even though it was well scoured at a simmer.

Of course I couldn’t quit there! I’d been saving up the marigolds that I had deadheaded off the plants for about a week but even after stealing a bunch of fresher blossoms didn’t have quite enough for a couple of yards of heavy cotton doubleknit that was next on the list. So I added some spent heads of the dyers’ chamomile (Anthemis tinctoria) to make up the weight of flowers. My plants are not yellow as is the usual variety but white with yellow centres like regular chamomile. Even so they still dye quite well.

Dyer’s chamomile (var. Sauce Hollandaise)

I wasn’t picky and left in the stems and the sepals and likely a few aphids and ants as well! I simmered the lot for at least an hour. Meanwhile the cotton knit was mordanted in myrobalan and alum acetate (in separate steps) and then into the pot after the flower heads had been sieved out. Now I got a really strong colour of slightly greenish yellow even though I hadn’t heavily scoured this fabric but just ran it through a couple of laundry loads because it was a freebie from a neighbour and slightly grubby.

Marigold and dyer’s chamomile on cotton knit

Lastly instead of using dye plants from the garden I decided to use up as much of a jar of lac extract as I could. Even though this insect dye gives great colours of raspberry reds to purples, it absolutely stinks! I can’t dye it indoors at all or it gives me a sore throat. It’s that bad. It also is a PITA to wash out because it stains everything: rubber gloves, pails, washpan, sink, and even my best stainless steel dyepot is currently pink. Hopefully it will lose that eventually because I hesitate to dye anything that will pick up the colour from the pot. Anyway, I used most of it up and dyed 3 metres of a natural linen/rayon blend which was first mordanted in gallnut and alum acetate. This fabric (of which I have quite a lot left from a 50 yard bolt) dyes beautifully.

I left it for a day or so after dyeing before rinsing it in cold water over and over and over (8 times!) outdoors in the gravel driveway before running it through a machine wash with Synthrapol and then dried in the dryer. I’m still planning to be careful when I wash any garment I sew out of this in case it still has the power to stain anything. I don’t trust it! But isn’t it gorgeous? And no longer stinky. Yay.

I haven’t exactly decided what I’m going to make out of these fabrics yet, apart from the indigo one which will be a shirt for Thom, but they certainly coordinate nicely together.

Wait! That’s not all. I finished sewing a tester version of Closet Core Patterns Kalle Shirt that became an actual wearable garment. I used a bleached muslin from deepest stash and sewed the cropped version with cotton thread on purpose so it could be dyed. I have more to say about this pattern but I think I’ll leave it until I make the actual tunic version that I originally had in mind. But here’s the wearable muslin before I scrunched it up.

Kalle shirt before dyeing, minus buttons

I had saved my myrobalan mordant bath so I heated it up and used that to soak the scrunched shirt. Then I squeezed it out and put it into an iron modifier bath (2% WOF dissolved in hot tap water). It immediately turned grey but not as dark a colour as I had hoped. Perhaps there wasn’t enough myro in the pot or it didn’t stay in long enough since it was probably a lot more diluted than I needed. Or the muslin wasn’t scoured well enough? I quite like the results though.

At least it’s not white. Heh. Yes, I know it needs ironing but it still smells like rusty nails so needs another wash before I’m going to wear it. I’m a bit hesitant about this style on me and how to incorporate it into my wardrobe but we shall see. It only cost me some time and I learned a lot. It’s not a bad fit I think but I’ll be making a few fit adjustments anyway before making the tunic. More on that when I get to it.

Stay well and stay cool (or warm depending on where you live)! And WEAR YOUR DAMN MASK!!!

Goodbye April

April 30, 2020 damselflysdelights2 Comments

Well that was fast! Or slow. Depends on your perspective I guess! We’re well and still hanging about at home with as many long walks as possible and the occasional foray out to get groceries. The grocery shopping is pretty stressful: attempting to follow the ever-changing rules, trying to maintain 2 metres distance from everyone else, wearing disposable gloves and occasionally a mask, finding out that some important items might not be available and not stopping anywhere for long or touching anything unnecessarily. Ugh. We’re in something like Week Number 8 of this now with no real end in sight. British Columbia is doing very well at “flattening the curve” but finding a New Normal will be slow and cautious. Better that than jumping right back into things and finding out too late that it wasn’t a good move!

My emotional state has been going up and down. One minute feeling my normal positive self and the next just wanting to sit and read fluffy Regency romance novels. There’s a lot to be said for immersing oneself into a story where there are solutions to difficult problems and a guaranteed happy ending! I really didn’t think I was very stressed at all at first. I mean, nothing really has changed that much in our normally rather quiet life. Until my psoriasis flared up the worst it’s been since the horrible Year of the Itchy-Peelies in 2010. (The only good thing I got out of that nightmare was a diagnosis.) Meanwhile, I’m bathing carefully, greasing up well with cortisone and my homemade shea butter-based cream and wearing my softest leggings. I’m practically leaving a slime trail like my wee little friend here.

And I also realised that my reluctance to get back into sewing was because I was feeling guilty for not wanting to sew masks or other PPE for anyone, not even myself. The whole situation just makes me angry that something so inevitable like this pandemic wasn’t foreseen and planned for and that manufacturing of PPE was all sent offshore so that there is no domestic stock to fall back on. Profit over public safety. They’re scrambling now to retool some Canadian companies but too little too late. Better than nothing though I suppose. However I and other sewists like me can’t realistically be expected to make up the shortfall. For some sewists it’s been a way to feel helpful and contribute to their community. Good for them but I still haven’t been convinced to join in. Too stressful.

Instead I chose to go in a completely different direction and weave dish towels. I’m currently on number 5! It’s slow going and my concentration level drops right off after an hour or two. Only one more to go after this one though so I’m sticking to it. Maybe when I’m done this warp I’ll sew something? I need some new basic t-shirts and I’ve got lots of knits. Unfortunately I’ve already started to forget all the great plans I had for potential garments that occurred while I was sorting and inventorying my fabrics and patterns a few months ago. I’m sure if I start somewhere one garment will lead to another as it always does.

Otherwise, I finished a pair of socks for Thom!

These are plain socks on 68 stitches in my own basic pattern. The yarn is ONline Supersocke 100 from deep stash. I probably bought it for me but he needs new socks more than I do. And he is perfectly happy to have them knit in wild and wonderful yarns! They don’t really show under his jeans anyway so they’re kind of like a crazy secret love message from me. Heh. I’ve already cast on another pair for him, this time in a mostly red striped yarn with dashes of charcoal, brown and a bright purple. Knitting them is something I can do while reading at least when my hands are up for it.

Gardening has been using most of my energy. It’s pretty mindless and soothing and I have something to show for all the work. Behold my tomatoes are tucked into their greenhouse.

This will be a jungle of epic proportions in another couple of months! And I got the dye garden finished. Japanese indigo is taking up the most space this year.

And the dyers coreopsis is in, tucked between the single bolting woad plant and the perennial coreopsis. They’ll get a lot taller and bushier and will need string and stakes before they collapse. Those are non-dye-providing Welsh poppies coming up on the left, aka pretty weeds.

The madder is coming up well. I always wish they were more attractive plants instead of scratchy and floppy and covered in black aphids. Right now they look pretty nice though.

And I’ve been harvesting greens and reds from the veggie garden for salads. The bok choy is doing particularly well this spring. Here’s just one pail full of yummy.

Next, I need to plant the beans and zucchinis. They can wait until next week or the one after. The soil needs to be warm enough for them. And also weeding and digging some of the front garden so I can plant the rest of the flowers somewhere. The marigolds are looking especially nice but they’re getting too big for their little pots. I put some in the dye garden but ran out of room. Moving right along. Playing in the dirt seems to be my happy place right now and this is the time of year when the most work needs to be done.

I know I’ve been rather quiet these days. But I’m hoping that feeling is passing. Time will tell. Stay well!

April Showers

April 5, 2019 damselflysdelights4 Comments

We’ve had such lovely weather in March but now it seems that the old April showers trope is true. Luckily I got quite a lot of the garden dug and ready before the rains hit. The peas and spinach are coming up now and I’ve been harvesting kale buds, corn salad (mache) and chives. In the greenhouse the baby seedlings are waiting until they are a little bigger before being transplanted into the garden. The tiny Japanese indigo plants are still being brought in every night since it’s warmer under the grow lights.

They won’t be going out into their bed for awhile yet. Neither will the coreopsis, marigolds or sulphur cosmos.

The cosmos (the very similar looking plants in the back) are new for me this year. I’m testing to see how well they do in my garden and also how well they do in the dyepot. A yellow to orange dye, depending on pH., similar to the dyer’s coreopsis. They can grow quite large and need sun so it remains to be seen if I can give them what they need. Nowhere in my yard gets full sun all day anymore thanks to all the big trees but most things do OK with less. We shall see, won’t we? At least they don’t need a lot of water or fertilizer.

The rest of the biannual and perennial dyeplants are already perking up in the garden. The madder seems to have survived being dug up, root-pruned and divided into a different part of the dye garden. So did the rhubarb. I keep digging out part of the clump of dyer’s chamomile but it keeps looking just as large. I have a couple of volunteer weld plants which I’ll probably allow to go to seed this year just to freshen up my seed supply. Though I don’t need more than one or two plants a year anyway for the small amount of dyeing I do with weld. It’s a large plant! And very easy to grow just about anywhere.

It’s kind of nice to have a bit of a break from the digging. Though I’m especially happy to be finished with days and weeks of sorting out all the stuff for the craft supplies sale tomorrow. I have books, magazines, a bit of yarn, some sewing patterns (uncut), and beads-beads-beads. I only packaged up about 2/3 of the bead stash and there’s still lots left. For this go-round I concentrated on the beading, doll-making, paper arts, and embellishment stuff. I didn’t even go through the fabrics or fibres at all. Plus there’s still plenty of sewing, knitting, spinning, dyeing, crochet, weaving and braiding books and mags left! So I think I’m all ready now. Maybe. I have way too much stuff for a single table (18 boxes full!) but that’s all the sale space I’ve got to work with. And this was just the first pass through the stash too. Yikes. I’m certainly going to be very aware of anything new that comes into this house in future. Remind me of this when I get antsy to buy any new stuff, won’t you?

Uh-oh. Glad we already loaded up the van in the garage with the sale boxes during an earlier dry period because now it’s raining quite hard! If this continues tomorrow it’s going to be equally exciting unloading without getting vulnerable books wet. I am so not looking forward to this. Wish me luck finding new homes for it all! Or at least some of it.