alum.This ensures the dye bonds to the fibre, improves brightness and stops it from running.
5. Woad (Isatis tinctoria)
The famous blue dye is obtained from the leaves of this upright biennial which bears heads of yellow flowers in early summer, which are a magnet for bees, followed by brown seedheads.The seeds can also be simmered to create a dye liquid.
3. Dyes are extracted by simmering plant matter in stainless steel pots (kept separate from kitchen pans). Once the fibre is added, it’s gently heated until the desired shade is reached. 4.You can even shift colours by adjusting the pH value – a splash of lemon juice will bring warmer tones, while washing soda can push them cooler. 5.After dyeing, rinse fabrics gently by hand, and always dry out of direct sunlight to preserve colour.With the right mordanting, your colours will be colourfast and long- lasting.
What we can learn from history
Somers notes:“In the early 12th century, Irish families sought to create yellow fabrics using agrimony, bog myrtle, buckthorn, gorse, marsh marigold, meadowsweet, pennywort, wood sorrel, broom, dandelion, sundew, water pepper, yellow wort and others. “The cloth first had to be bleached before dyeing – a process far from straightforward. Each family had their own secret recipe: fermented bran, buttermilk, lye, wood ash, urine, even sheep and cow dung. “After boiling the linen in this odoriferous mixture, they laid it out on the grass and prayed for the sun or spread the cloth across frosted grass in the hope it would be whitewashed by moonbeams.” When King Louis IX of France, followed later by Henry VIII in England, started wearing blue rather than red, it sparked colour wars between woad and madder growers and merchants, as fashion as commerce collided with religion and power. “While natural fibres and dyes are ingredients in the future of our clothes, they are not the whole answer.Yes, land can grow fibre and colour, but it must also grow food,” Somers continues. “The key is not to swing from one extreme to the other, from synthetic dyes to natural, but to consider the full spectrum of possibility so the whole system can work in harmony.
Ideal plants for dyeing textiles
1. Madder (Rubia tinctorum)
Cultivated for centuries, its roots yield peachy pinks to deep brick reds, thanks to alizarin and purpurin compounds. It needs two to three years to mature, but produces some of the richest reds in the natural dye world.
2. Weld (Reseda luteola)
A European native, rich in luteolin, producing one of the brightest, most lightfast yellows. It grows happily in poor soil and rewards you with colour in its second year.
3. Walnut (Juglans regia)
The discarded green husks from walnut trees contain juglone, a tannin that gives warm browns. Combined with iron, it can produce a near-black.
4. Nettle (Urtica dioica)
A humble and abundant plant, nettles yield soft greenish greys in spring.Always harvest responsibly and take care to identify correctly – never confuse with toxic lookalikes such as hemlock.
“The choices we make today will leave their mark on the world just as indelibly as the colours on a dyer’s cloth.”
Kew’s Material World festival runs from Sep 20-Nov
Photo: wool dyed with woad
Photo: madder root.
Photo: common nettles
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