Above: top row L to R; indigo, avocado skin, bracken, lower row L to R; coreopsis, chopped avocado pits, whole avocado pits
Progress report. I’ve been fiddling about with natural dyeing for my Totally Local outfit… this is the new name for the challenge known last year as 1 year 1 outfit; where we make an outfit for ourselves using ONLY locally sourced materials and absolutely nothing NOT!!! Yep, for us that rules out zips, thread, and even fabric! making it quite a challenge. That’s ok, I love a challenge. The “totally local” is the brainchild of Nicki, of this is moonlight. I enjoyed myself so much last year I wanted to do it again, and have been brainstorming ideas and hatching plans for my outfit for this year, mwahahahaha.
My outfit from last year is here… and it’s all very… colourless? isn’t it? That’s because I opted to use just the natural undyed merino and alpaca wool for my outfit, which is all white or off-white by default. The only one shot of colour in my ensemble is the brilliant chartreuse sour-grass dyed crochet border on my underwear, which is hidden away! Yeah that was a bit silly, wasn’t it?! Anyway, this year I am aiming for a bit more colour in my ensemble, and so have been gathering lots of materials and bits and bobs to make some pretty COLOURS!
So here’s the run-down…
I’ve been buying skeins of handspun, naturally white merino wool from Bilby Yarns. This merino is 100% Western Australian, grown, sheared and, well, everything locally. The fleece was spun by two lovely local ladies, Beverley and Gwen. Literally, nothing about this wool has ever stepped foot outside of the south west of Western Australia, so it qualifies for the challenge perfectly!
You might remember that last year I used naturally white merino yarn that had been handspun by Beverley, for the kangaroo paw embroidery and sewing-together of my felted dress. I still had some of that yarn left over and simply bought some more, as Beverley spun more. In some cases, I bought it still wet from its wash!
Now on to les couleurs…
Blue: I owe this beautiful shade of indigo blue to Nicki from this is moonlight, thank you, Nicki! Nicki sourced and nurtured a pot of local indigo… I think it was with the assistance of Trudi Pollard? (not sure, maybe Nicki can correct me if she reads this!) and then, when she learnt she would be going over to the eastern states and would not be taking her indigo pot with her, generously offered to share it with a few others of us local girls who are doing the project, . Thank you so much, Nicki! we had a great fun day, dyeing with various locally sourced dyes that Nicki had built up. I personally only had eyes for that enormously difficult to obtain BLUE. I soaked a few of my skeins, gently wrung them out and bought them home unwashed and still full of the dye, to “steep”. Those skeins turned out intensely blue… practically navy! So, at home, after a few weeks of sitting, I soaked those skeins with some fresh, new, white merino, and the washings gave me this lighter shade of mid-blue above. I’m planning to keep and use those deeper blue skeins, probably next year, because for this year, I really wanted these more washed-out shades.
My blue wool above is pictured here with some of my own indigo plants, that I am careful nurturing and trying real hard not to kill. I do hope to use these for dyeing… one day. Obviously that is not about to happen anytime soon, though.
Pink; from avocado pits, merino pre-mordanted with alum. My avocados were grown on a market garden in Wanneroo, and I bought them from Scutti’s, my local greengrocer. Basically, I bought them while in season and have been hoarding and freezing the pits and skins all summer! Once I had enough pits to play with, I gently brought my wool to the boil with some unbroken pits as described in this method here, and left it to cool in the dye and then to soak for a further four days, as the colour of the pot deepened. I was seriously blown away by how beautiful the colour turned out! so I’ve been collecting more avocado pits and will probably do some more wool this exact same shade. I LOVE IT.
Apricot; this is the result of dyeing with chopped up avocado pits, plus skins; merino pre-mordanted with alum. Again, boiled gently for half and hour or so, topping up with boiling water as needed, then left to cool and then soak in the solution for four more days. I quite like this colour, and may do some more of it.
Light sage green; this is the result of dyeing with avocado skins with some avocado flesh left on them… same method as above. This colour is alright, quite soft, a barely there grey/green. Green seems to be another one of those elusive shades that is quite difficult to obtain from our local resources. I may or may not overdye this one a touch… just waiting and seeing for a bit …
Yellow-y apricot; just a few coreopsis flowers, on merino pre-mordanted with alum. The coreopsis flowers are grown in a garden in Willagee, harvested and dried by the owner, and are available through Bilby Yarns. To get this soft colour, you really do only need just a few flowers. For my first experiments, I used lots. Haha, the joke’s on me, because that first batch turned out brilliant, BRIGHT orange. For this shade I kept a close eye on it; taking it out to check and rinsing a few times, dipping for just a bit longer until I reached this nice soft shade.
Pale, rusty pink; this is bracken, on merino pre-mordanted in alum. I gathered the bracken from my parents’ place. Hehe, funny, story, I half-jokingly asked Mum… “would it be alright if I picked some bracken for a dyeing project?” After a short incredulous pause Mum says, “Carolyn, pick as much as you like!!!” To explain, Mum and Dad have a large property, with loads and LOADS of bracken, and Mum HATES it with a deep fiery passion. It is a native plant so she lets it be for the most part; but when we first got the block it was overgrowing the paddock quite severely and Mum wanted to put in an orchard. I have memories of my Dad driving all around the paddock with a log chained to the back of his land rover, dragging it across the bracken, trying to clear it away. It’s such tenacious stuff, it grew back over and over and over again! Year after year it kept popping up all over the place. Mum eventually got enough cleared for her orchard… but it was a massive effort.
That frond in the picture above is dead and brown… obviously, since I’d just boiled the living daylights out of it for dyeing!! I did pick and use quite a big bunch but forgot to keep just one little frond aside for a demonstrative picture with my wool… but if you can imagine, it is actually quite a strong, bright green in colour, so this beautiful, port-wine/pink shade it gave was a lovely surprise to me.
I love all those beautifully soft pastelly shades, and am so happy how they blend together so tonally and gently. In the process of dyeing I did get a few other stronger shades, that while I like them very well in their own right I’m still undecided as to whether to use them for this particular project… as follows:
From left:
Bright orange: from a large number of coreopsis flowers. It’s lovely, but maybe not a good match with all my pastels…
Moss green; a result of one dip in indigo, plus a dip in the coreopsis bath. I really love this colour, but again, quite strong and vivid …
and deep navy blue, from Nicki’s dye-pot. I’m not sure how I managed to get such a deep shade from the pot! I’m wondering if it got caught up in some indigo sludge at the bottom or something… but this is a very strong colour for a single dip in natural indigo!
Mustard: I seriously adore this mustard, the result of one dip in coreopsis and then a further dip in avocado skin dye. It does go so nicely with all the other colours! but is one of the “strong” ones, so I’m still um-ing and ah-ing over this one too…
So that’s it! to summarise; I’m pretty excited about all the lovely colours you can get dyeing with local plants. The only one that I would describe as difficult to obtain locally is the indigo, of course… if we did not know someone who had nurtured and cultivated a special dye-pot then blue would not have happened for me this time, so I am so glad and grateful that Nicki got one! Blue is the hardest of colours to come by naturally. The other plant sources; the coreopsis, avocado and bracken; are all plants that are grown right here in Western Australia for some reason or another. Also, of course don’t forget sour grass! this is a rampant weed around these parts, and last year I picked some from my own garden and got this bright acidic yellow colour, as described here. I’m currently carefully nurturing some more weeds precious sour grass, with a view to getting some more wool in this colour too…
Look at this divine array of colours!! I’ve got some colour decisions to make, designs to design 😉 in short, I’m getting pretty hyped to continue on with the next stage of my totally local outfit!
from top to bottom: coreopsis (light), chopped avocado pits, bracken, whole avocado pits, avocado skins, indigo (light), indigo (dark), indigo + coreopsis, coreopsis (dark), coreopsis + avocado skins, sour grass
Absolutely fascinating! I love all the colours, you have a difficult job choosing indeed. I can’t wait to see your outfit!
Such an amazing range of colours. I guess we can expect to see a much more colourful outfit this year.
Great post! I love all the effort and experimentation that has gone into this (and all your projects!). The pastels are so pretty.
I’m amazed at the colour options purely from natural dyes. I could never make up my mind!
You get a lot of colours from your natural dyes. I can’t imagine how you’ll choose but whatever colour you pick has to be beautiful – they all are.
It’s a very exciting experiment.
My mom was really into natural dyes when I was growing up, but she mostly used cochenille beetles, onion skins, and of course indigo. She spins, so she would just blend different colours of fleece to get other shades. Onion skins were always really easy to come by, my brother and I weren’t ever allowed to compost them. They produce anything from pastel yellow to brilliant, flaming orange, if I recall.
Your dyes have such amazing results, the colours are beautiful!
oh it’s going to be so interesting to see what you’re going to make this time..and knowing you, i assume you ain’t just gonna knit your outfit, it’s going to be more elaborate 🙂 love the colors you achieved! i should experiment more with natural dyes.. started to play with that last year, but it was winter, and no plants around.. it’s finally spring here now, so i might start harvesting my plants soon, and experimenting more..
That’s just amazing to see what colours nature can provide for dying. Great post, thank you!
Beautiful colours!
I wouldn’t have thought that you could get this range of different colors with natural dye, I really am impressed! I especially love those darker/deeper colors and I would love to try out natural dying for myself! Thanks for the inspiration and the report, your information is so valuable!
I had no idea you could produce such wonderful colours, the darker green is gorgeous. Do you have to do anything to seal the colour?
That’s what the mordant does
seamsoddlouise; I pre-mordanted all my wool with alum
That’s so neat! I’m a little fascinated by natural dyeing, I actually did some reading up on it in some library books a couple of years ago, but didn’t have any time to do anything about it at the time. I still think it would be fun to try out sometime, though. I had no idea that you could dye with avocados!
they are lovely, – I always find wool so hard to dye – I am hoping to try some ivy dye this year, on silk so it should be easier than wool, but it will be the first time for me to try natural dyes – I did some indigo experiments on cotton last year and an added plus, it was nice to know the dye residue could be disposed of safely!
I am finding this so interesting, and I absolutely love the soft, gentle and very harmonious shade you have achieved. The brights are great too. I have only had experience with indigo, and it was quite hard to fine tune. I did get some nice light blue and some deeper tones but everything I did was quite uneven (linen and cotton). Silk however dyed much better. I didn’t try wool. Like you I am very excited to see the muted pastels made up. Wowie.
What a glorious array of colors you’ve made!!! Who would’ve thought the avocado and bracken would produce those particular shades of colors?! So interesting. Can’t wait to see what you are up to next! 🙂
Wow, I had no idea you could get such a pretty colour from avocado pits!
Gorgeous colors! Can’t wait to e what you make with them.
I’ll never look at an avocado pit the same way again. These colours are all so beautiful. I look forward to seeing what comes out of these.
Simply marvelous!
I am so excited to see what you create with these wonderful colours. My experiments are going more slowly!
I saw a post on Pinterest recently about dying wool blue with black beans, I don’t know if you can source those locally grown, but they certainly looked to make a stunning blue in the article. Would love to try some natural dyes soon, have just done some experiments dying with cake dyes which has been fun!
I was going to say I loved the green, but then I looked at the deep indigo again, then the yellow, then at your rainbow… they’re all fabuloso. Good luck choosing which ones!
You really got some lovely results! I’m looking forward to seeing what you’ll make with them.
This past year, my mother has started to experiment with natural dyes as well although obviously, living in the Netherlands, she has very different plants available to her. She is using those dyes on sheep’s wool which she spins herself (I think she usually gets the fleeces the way they come off the sheep, so there is a lot of soaking and cleaning involved before she can even start on anything else).
And I used to help a designer who worked with organic textiles (although she didn’t focus on local production). From that, I remember that deep, saturated colours were always difficult to get with natural dyes. A true black for example or a bright red.
Where does the alum come from?
Where does the alum come from? Which species of indigo are you nurturing?
Oh and Wow!
Welshpool, and Polygonum tinctorium 🙂
Very interesting! I’ve just started spinning my own yarns, and am currently looking into dying with natural stuff 🙂 Love the avocado colors. Do they hold up to light? I know this can be a huge problem with plant dyes.
Thanks for the inspiration!
thank you… I love the avocado colours too so I certainly hope so, all my reading suggests they do 🙂
These colors are beautiful! I never would have thought avocados could produce such gorgeous colors. Love them!
Why the concern about bright colors? I feel that muted shades are “all one can expect” from natural dyes, so I was delighted to see bright pops of color in there as well. And I know I’ve seen you in saturated clothing…
What are you doing with the yarn?, I guess is what it comes down to. But I vote for bright and shinies 😛
I just want them to all harmonise with each other. When I was dyeing them, at first I thought the brighter ones were clashing with the softer colours; but the longer I see them sitting beside each other though, the more I like them all together… 🙂
Awesome! That warm pink from the avocado pits is especially amazing! All the colors harmonize so beautifully too. What a pretty fair isle they would all make together. 🙂
hi Carolyn we used eucalyptus in the 70’s-80’s you can actually get every colour by changing the mordants and the pinks and greens are amazing. I’m sure we used to get special eucalyptus sent over from W.A. as they had the best colours. It’s worth you looking it up. We all wore handspun and dyed jumpers knitted in the round (and made our own shoes but not fashion like you are doing) Its wonderful to see you doing all this and putting your own twist on it all.
Wow, I didn’t know you could get all those lovely colours from natural dyeing.
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