Natural dye

After learning how to dye with chemicals I wanted to try dying with natural materials, such as fruit or plants. I chose to use pomegranate as it has such an intense colour I wanted to see how it would affect different fibres. I then took all the fruit from two large pomegranates and boiled it in 9 pints of water for 2 hours until all the dye was soaked into the materials. I found that wool became a more dark brown/ pink shade, whereas the cotton and synthetic fibres became a cotton candy pink. I then researched different artists that use natural dye in there work and I found this work by textile artist Carolyn Saxby, she experiments with different materials and plants to see how it effects the dying process. A piece from her blog on natural dying: http://carolynsaxby.blogspot.com/2009/08/natural-dyeing-yellow.html

I made this piece by knitting through felt with string. I wanted to see how the dye would take to the string and felt. It worked how I imagined, taking more to the string leaving a nice contrasting effect between the two materials. I also like that it looks interesting from both sides.

I like seeing the contrast between all the different yarns. When the dye was nearly all soaked some materials started to burn at the bottom of the pan, including this piece of knitted string which is darker on one side than the other which you can see in this photo.

from top: scrim, a tightly woven net and cotton.

I knotted this yarn before dying it which gave a striped effect when I undid the knots after dying, I think this worked very affectively.

I also tried dying this felt ball but I don't think this worked as affectively as the dye soaked totally through the ball and gave a monochrome effect. The purple netting makes it a little more interesting but apart from that it looks boring. I was hoping that the colour would seep through the felt, making the colour more intense on the outside and faded on the inside.