Day 5 Creativity - what's not to love about Natural Dyeing

 

I decided that yesterday's post would be the last on Natural Dyeing for a while. However, today has seen such wonderful colours appear that I am not sticking to that.

I decided that I wanted to keep as much as I could of the meadowsweet dyeing so went for the fair isle yoked jumper option. I plan to do the traditional star and tree Shetland version if the stitches work out..... so I need main plus 5 colours. Last night I worked out a bit of a plan for the five colours, and this morning started on my quest. I may be tight for wool for the main part so decided to mordant 50 g more and dye that with madder as it will be a colour that will lift the meadowsweet colour and give me another 30 g for the main part of the jumper.

So this is what I have got by using additives:
Lighter green - iron
Darker green - more iron
Coral - madder on its own
Golden brown - madder over dyeing the meadowsweet
Bright gold - tin

 

(Apologies the skeins have not been re skeined so the washing ties are still in them, hope this is not too distracting)

This is what I just love, having decided on a colour range, using my local meadowsweet dyed yarn ( except in one case) I have a collection of gorgeous strong colours all by Natural Dyeing.

I will so enjoy making and wearing this jumper knowing that it is British Wool and dyed from meadowsweet a few hundred yards from my house. Of course, in addition the meadowsweet are due to be cut back as soon as the farmer is not harvesting the corn and has time to clear his ditches.

Quite a good example of sustainable textiles I think. All the waste dyestuff has gone on the garden to water the plants and the heated meadowsweet residue will be composted. The additives do contain metal salts but by careful calculation very little is left in the dyepot.

Now do I go and gather more meadowsweet and dye the rest of the other cone of cream yarn so I can weave the scarf I intended to do initially?