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.

Final piece

I decided to put this piece up as my final piece. I felt like it shows how much I have learnt and also the most finished piece I have. I think it was quite an experimental think to knit through the scrim and it worked very effectively as the dye held more in the wool thread than the scrim material, making the textures stand out more.

Dye Workshop

We were told to make pieces of felt using white wool and thread to take to the dye lab. I decided I wanted to put different pieces of knitting in with my felt to create a patterned texture. I also thought instead of just creating a piece of knitting why not try knitting through a piece of material I could dye. This worked very well, I learnt that I needed to knit on both sides of the fabric for it all to stay attached. I found that when placed in a dark dye the knitted pieces I made didn't stay that textured so I decided to manipulate these in different ways with stitching later. I found that dye doesn't apply itself the same to all threads and materials so this gives a nice effect when using different types together. Before dying I decided to place my felt pieces over a light to show all the different textures in them, this worked very effectively, it looked like an x-ray.

I chose the colours to dye my pieces from this photo. 

Conclusion to felt workshop

I chose this photo to work from as I like the marks, layers and different colours.

I made this expressive drawing with masking tape and oil pastels. I like the movement my marks have created, I also like the slight texture the masking tape has created. I then did rubbings of the masking tape with graphite, I like the marks this created.

I wanted to recreate the colours and marks from the photo using felt and machine stitching. I think the marks have worked effectively with the machine stitching as it is so layered and heavy giving it many dimensions. But I am unhappy with the felt as the colours look too heavy. 

These are small samples using a mixture of different threads and materials. I think these worked more effectively, a few were taken from another sample which I cut up as it wasn't effective at all.