Natural Dye Eco Printing on Silk

My messing around with the gifts of nature began around age 4 - creating rose 'perfume', which to my dismay lost its delightful aroma at speed!  My nature messing has contined in various guises since and these days is focussed on visual results.  Combining my passion for plants and textiles through natural dyeing has been joyful and will without doubt, continue as work in progress for many a year.  

There is much to learn from those who have long experimented with diligence and Jenny Dean has been my UK natural dye guru from the off.  After 7 or so years of my own experimenting, I now feel that I have something to share with others and my opening offering this Spring is tutoring eco printing on silk.  

While achieving colour through natural dyes is hugely exciting, I learnt early on that amazing colours in nature do not automatcially transfer to cloth.  Understanding what creates a strong and lasting bond between cloth and natural dye stuff is vital, along with recognising that results from experiments can be unpredictable.  Of the three generic types of fibre, cellulose and protein fibres can take up natural dye and manmade fibres generally do not.  Cellulose fibres such as cotton are where many begin their natural dye journey, however, I find that protein fibres are a more kindly start.  Silk and wool take up and retain colour from natural materials with comparative ease, compared with cellulose fibres such as cotton, linen, flax and hemp.  This said, there is still a little preparation to be completed on the white silk awaiting its colour transformation.

Which brings me to mordanting, a subject that is worthy of a full independant explanation.  Derived from the latin term mordere - "to bite", in simple terms this is a process that prepares fibres to receive the natural colour source.  The preparation for silk and wool is straight forward and of the possbile options I have found potassium aluminium sulfate, to be a reliable, safe and easy to source.  The amount used is 15% of the weight of the dry silk and the alum powder is disolved in sufficient water for the cloth to be able to move around.  The silk cloth needs to be gently simmered for around an hour (avoiding boiling which damages the sheen) and then cooled.  I usually mordant silk the day before eco printing and cool in the alum mordant overnight.  This is silk noil steeping in alum and its texture and slubbiness makes for interesting results with natural dyes.

Finally the exciting day of choosing natural dyes arrives - oh where to start!  For anyone like me with wild notions of eco printing in the winter months, dried natural dye materials are a must try.  Favourites that I have personally experimented with include, madder, weld, logwood, cochineal, pomegranate, osage, lac, fustic, cutch, brazilwood, and sandalwood.  

The long standing UK retailer Wingham Wools stocks a wide variety of dried dye stuff, along with a range of mordants.  There's the added bonus that these dried materials provide strong colour results for years and they are also very appealing to look at.

Then on to fresh natural dye supplies, with an even longer list of possiblities.  I try to use as many local plants in the flowering season as possible, including some of my own grown - I have observed that plants that have grown freely give better results than those that are forced.  Buddlea Davidii grows prolifically around my studio and the white and blue flowers both give a strong and lasting yellow.  Calendula from the daisy family is another flower that gives a reliable yellow, while its daisy cousin Coreposis Tinctoria gives vibrant orange tones.  With a long love of European plants, I keep a few Hibiscus plants and this genus of the mallow family can produce varying shades of pink.  A few of the other easily sourced UK flowers that are strong in their colour offerings are Dahlia, Dandelion, Hypericum, Iris, Nepita, Pansies, Rubeckia, Safflower - each with numerous varieties that behave differently, my workshop list grows longer by the day!  This year I am going to experiment with freezing flowers as well as drying and then there is another world of leaves and bark to explore!

That moment of starting to transform white silk is exciting and scary in equal measures.  Feeling a bit like staring at a piece of white paper waiting to be painted upon, my solution to being paralysed by choice is sampling.  Practicing on small fabric pieces is fun and a whole lot cheaper and quicker than making blind dye material dye choices on large fabric pieces.  While the results from dry materials are pretty reliable, those from fresh materials can vary enormously throughout the growing season.  This sample was a case in point - hopeful of blue dye from pansy petals used on this sample, what transpired was very little and masses of blue from the dark burgundy pansy petals!

Larger silk pieces can be completed with much more confidence after sampling.  The intial inclination with eco printing is to create a 'design', yet I and others have often found the randomised approach to start with is very pleasing and exciting.  Nicola used the information from her morning of workshop sampling to choose from a selection of dried and fresh early Spring materials.  While this looks like there will be lots of white on the finished piece, many of the dye colours flow on the wet silk into the white spaces and create very pleasing effects.

I often just place dye stuff on just half of the fabric and then fold over the surplus fabric to cover the layout.  A little additional vinegar at this point can also help some materials to provide colour, although the effect can vary from one dye stuff to the next.  There is much to learn about pH in natural dyeing and the effects of adding acidic and alkaline solutions at varying stages of the process become clearer with experimentation.  

For eco printing on silk, steaming is then used to help to transfer the dye stuff to the fibres.  I use a very simple method with a deep colander on top of my large dye pot.  There are many methods of 'bundling' the cloth to go into the steamer and memories of pastry rolling are helpful.  Here are a couple of my favourite rolling methods - all of which require white string tightly bound - along with a label hanging outside the pot to remind me what materials I put on to the cloth!  The minimum steaming time is 45 minutes for materials that quickly give out their colour, up to several hours for dye stuff that needs more time.  It is important to leave the bundles to cool after steaming and better still, to leave overnight - patience invariably improves natural dye results.

I have been very satisfied with the results of my eco printing experiments on silk, much of which has been completed out of season.  My initial eco printing workshop in my studio early this Spring was very well received and I enjoyed inspiring others to create natural colour on cloth and make best use of supplies that are to hand.  It is wonderful feeling to know that there is now a summer of plants and colour creativity ahead and there will be more from me on this subject I am sure.