UNDERSTANDING PROCESS
I have never ventured into natural dye techniques before, but luckily i work at an Art College where there are people who can help me during my lunch break…!
Natural dye reacts most effectively when applied to natural fabrics, and by looking at the sample book in the workshop, wool and silk fabrics achieve the deepness of red that i am hoping to get from my raw madder. The workshop has a worsted that i will use, and this ties into a lot of my research around the yarns and fabrics that were used for the Norwich Shawls. The dye needs a mordant to fix it into the fabric, we have hard water in Norwich and this is why madder took to the fabric so well here during the peak of the Textile Industry. This can be enhanced by adding copper, aluminium or iron to the water – we tried a few samples today and they all came out very differently. I think that i will go with aluminium as this produces a scarlet red whereas copper is rusty and iron is plum in colour.
I need to check the sizes of my pieces before we start dyeing on a big scale later in the week. As with all my previous projects, it is the process which i am finding most engaging right now. i don’t know where it will take me, but im excited by its potential.
