#roundtripgoods

STAGE 1 : meet the babies

Mid-May 2024

I started many dye plants from seed this year and have been working hard to clear the invasive grass from my beds so I can plant my dye plants. I will be using most of these plants to dye cotton fabric, and to make ink for drawing and painting. Some of these plants are native to America, while others are european. 

Plants I started from seed:

Madder (the roots can be dug up and dyed with, after a few years)

Scabiosa (black pin-cushion)

Safflower (makes pink or orange dye)

Marigolds (classic from mexico, so fun and beautiful)

Black Hollyhock (might take a year or two)

indigo (japanese variety)

weld (bright yellowy green)

woad (native UK blue dye plant, not at potent at indigo)

I was recently in California (feb 2020) and gathered about 300g of blue gum eucalyptus leaves for my first eucalyptus dyeing experience. I did equal weight fiber to dye, a small 15g test batch and followed Babs Behan’s recipe: I broke up the leaves into small bits and simmered them with my Denver tap water for 3 hours, then let them cool in the pot overnight. The next day I strained the leaves, then divided the bath into two small pots (this came to about 4-5 cups of water in each) I added 1 TBS of homemade iron mordant solution to one pot, and cold immersed a 7g strip of (scoured, unmordanted repurposed cotton) into the bath. The grey sample above is the iron + eucalyptus cotton cold immersion overnight in the dye bath. I took half of this sample and heated the iron + euc. Bath for 30 minutes, let that sit overnight, and it was barely distinguishable to the shorter, cold immersion bath. The warm khaki I got is the eucalyptus by itself, I heated that bath for 30 minutes, then let cool overnight with fabric immersed. Washed, rinsed, dried.

Clothespin Shibori Indigo Noren Prototype 1

Belt Prototypes with “Jimi’s Cosmos” colorway. alkalined Madder + tumeric. 

1 dip indigo picnic napkin Prototype with retro stamp.