Comfrey for natural dyeing

Comfrey is a plant that I have tried to eradicate from one of my garden areas but it came back this year . . . it must have been "meant to be" because a few days ago I found myself looking for a plant that would give me green dye and, behold, comfrey seemed to fit the bill.

I used Jenny Dean's Botanical Colours as my reference and proceeded to cut up the leaves before pouring boiling water over them. After leaving the leaves overnight and then simmering the dye pot the next morning I removed the leaves (and later put them on my garden as green mulch) and put shibori raw silk into the pot.  The dye became a dark olive green very quickly but I decided to let it sit for eight hours before removing it and rinsing as I knew it would lighten up considerably.

I am delighted with the result after washing, which is a beautiful yellow-green ... just what I was hoping for!

Rust and Indigo combine in a fishy quilt

This is another version of a rusty fish quilt ... rusted onto cotton fabric from a corrugated fish that now hangs on the outside of our house.  After the fabric was rusted and well rinsed I dipped it in the indigo vat to get a medium blue background.

The fabric was then sandwiched with cotton quilt batting and a commercial fabric on the back and then quilted in wavy lines.  The fish was outlined with stitching and some of the key features were quilted.

Then it was on to the hand stitching . . . I chose to stitch the blue areas of the fish in a seed stitch and the rusty areas with layers of elongated stab stitches.  So far I have used two shades of rust to stitch the rusty areas but I might be adding another.

I have just started on the fins and have left the head and that gorgeous eye until the end ... you'll have to come back again to see what I do with that :)

Purple Carrots in the Dye Pot

Having seen some interesting results from people who have dyed fabric with purple carrots, I decided to give it a try myself this week.  These beautiful carrots are from Notch Hill Organic Farm and the ones that made it into our meals were very tasty.

I grated the carrots and put them in a cheesecloth bag (hoping to use the cheesecloth in some later project, too). They were simmered in a large pot and then I added a piece of linen and two pieces of silk.

Initially, the purple colour was totally gorgeous but it gradually became quite grey so I removed some of the dye to a second pot in order to experiment with additives.  I added some vinegar to the large pot and it went back to true purple. I added a bit of soda ash to the second pot and it went greenish-purple (I had put a piece of linen in that pot to check those results).  I removed the first piece of silk from the big pot just in case I was to lose that colour again, but left the remaining silk and linen in there to simmer for a couple of hours and then to soak in the cooling dye pot for more than 24 hours.

The photo shows the linen on the left (lovely pale lilac) ... habotai silk in the centre, also a pale lilac ... the crepe de chine silk is on the right and it has the most intense colour.  These photos look quite a lot greyer than they are in real life.  The linen in the secondary pot did not hold the colour once it was rinsed.

Eco print purses are ready!

Wow, it is a whole month since I posted here and I have been busy creating purses and scarves from my eco printed fabric.

This weekend I bundled up some more fabric with fall leaves and they are now curing for the next four or five days ... it is SO hard to wait that long to unroll the bundles and see what prints have appeared.  This time I used one pot to which I added just a little cutch and some pomegranate tea (the fabric looks warm brown on the outside of the bundles) and a second pot to which I added some logwood and osage along with rusty iron spikes (they look bluer on the outside of the bundles). 

Here are the bundles after they were taken from the pots and they are draining and curing in this mesh basket. The two darker bundles are scarves that I have over-printed to get some more distinct prints in the middle of them ... they were quite dark already so I am interested to see how they turn out this time ... maybe I shouldn't have added more iron, but I'm being adventuresome!

I have been working on a new design for purses using this eco printed fabric. They are a little larger than my usual little fold-over purses and they also have a sturdy zipper along the top.  I listed the first one in my Etsy shop today and will list more during the coming week.

I am also working on some of my "usual" design purses (one of them was listed in my shop today) as I know that some people just love that design.

Please drop by my Etsy shop to see more photos kathykinsella.etsy.com

What do you think of them????