Natural Dyes and me!

Natural dyes are my life! My work, my leisure, my reading, my visiting, everything revolves around dyeing and its history in some way.

I thought it time I started sharing with others my passion, it's quite hard to understand sometimes why people walk past the stall and go "I can buy that cheaper at the market" No they can't - at the market it won't have been lovingly hand dyed with natural dyes. Hours spent preparing the fibre, preparing the dyestuff and then putting the two together to come up with beautiful colours that ALL tone together, no matter what they are!!!

The hanks on the line in the picture have been dyed with woad (blue), weld (yellow) and madder (red). The three principle dyes throughout history. A full colour palate can be produced with just these three dyes, but there are also lots of others to add in, so we'll get to those in due time!

It's the time of year where I try out new things and spend as much time in the dyehouse as I can - sometimes it's just hanking up, but lots of work goes on in there, ready for the season starting at Easter.

I'm going to try and keep up the blog, please excuse me if I miss sometimes - we work away lots, but I'll try and let you know where I am and when, so maybe you can come and say "Hello" it we're nearby!