Natural dyeing…first attempts…
GORGEOUS wet bark from river red gums at Darebin Creek
When I landed an artist residency with the Australian Tapestry Workshop, I was given an option of working with their master weavers or with their master dye technicians (magicians).
I choose the weavers since…well…it IS the Australian TAPESTRY Workshop after all (…and I DO really want to learn tapestry techniques).
BUT.
It did get me thinking about dyeing…
The ATW have two dye technician/magicians working for them, one who custom dyes the yarns for their projects (and shop) using chemical recipes, and the other, who specialises in natural dyeing - using seeds, leaves, barks, roots and all manner of witchy-brew type things to dye yarns and fabrics.
As a bit of a colour fiend, I felt intrigued by both these areas of dyeing expertise.
Then…with this in mind…I was walking down at the creek after the rain, and I saw some BEAUTIFUL bits of deep russet and orange eucalyptus bark just lying lusciously around on the ground.
This also happened (happily) just after I had finished all the work for my upcoming exhibition…so I had a bit of free time on my hands.
Time to play. Or…a time to DYE…
Dyeing with river red gum bark: FIRST ATTEMPT
For my first foray into natural dyeing, I used these collected (gorgeously coloured) pieces of bark from red river gum tree (or trees).
I scoured the cotton canvas fabric first using soda ash, and an alum mordant, soaking the scoured fabric overnight.
I broke the bark into smallish pieces (double the weight of the fabric), soaked it in water overnight and then cooked it up in my big (now officially dye-appointed) stainless steel pot for a couple of hours.
(Just like a witch!)
Then I let it cool down and just sit for about 24 hours after that, to soak up all those eucalyptus juices.
As it turns out, I don’t know whether either the scouring OR the mordanting (which added a bit of time and materials to the proceedings) were totally necessary.
I included a control strip of fabric in the bark dye bath which I hadn’t scoured OR mordanted, and it dyed exactly the same shade of light, reddish brown. Apparently the tannins in the eucalyptus act as a mordant, so additional mordanting is not always needed.
The colour is very…brown. Less richly coloured than the bark itself.
Very NATURAL.
Not something I would have necessarily chosen, but that can make things interesting.
I’m not sure I could devote myself entirely to using ONLY naturally coloured fabrics or threads (not bright enough!) but I do like the sense of connection that the natural materials create between the work and the place where I find a lot of my inspiration: the creek (and trees, and bark, and lake, and grass and wattle and colours and textures and patterns…you get the idea…)
Next up: I’m going to try eucalyptus LEAVES…
And also - during my ATW residency I plan to absorb AS MUCH information and intelligence from their dye magicians as I can…
