Natural Dyes and Linen

 Would you believe that my family is planning on moving again? It would be my 5th move since I started this blog in 2008. If I'm lucky the future will hold a "craft room" for me...fingers crossed. I've been thinning out my possessions in preparation for moving.  I had little bottles of dye-stuff from Maiwa, the natural dye store in Vancouver BC. I figured a good use for these little bits would be to experiment dyeing something other than wool. I went with my second favorite textile---linen.

I cut little squares and began experimenting. Dying fabric and cellulose fiber is new to me. It was so much fun  using these little squares because there was no harm done if I screwed it up. It's not as risky as dying a yarn that took 2 weeks to spin, right?

Normally I don't like cutch but on fabric it looked nice. I added iron to cutch and got a totally cool dark taupe.  Marigold made a nice orange-yellow. I added tartaric acid to marigold and got a pale yellow.

I tried black tea and got a dull color. I used marigolds and back tea and it looked a little more interesting.

 The logwood experiment was interesting. When I added tartaric acid I got an orange instead of the standard purple that usually comes from logwood.



The house that we are trying to buy was built in 1912. I've looked at paint swatches of color palettes from that time period. Of course they only had natural pigments back then. Inspired by the old-timey colors and the linen swatches I was dying, I decided to make a color palette: cutch, marigold, cutch with iron, logwood with tartaric acid, and marigold with black tea! I showed the palette to my Hubby and he was not impressed. That's okay.  I'll just keep day-dreaming of remodeling my future home.