what are nettles good for #8. Dyeing.
Some years ago himself bought me a book on dyeing with natural materials : Wild Colour by Jenny Dean, which unfortunately is no longer in print. Actually I think it was a bit of a mistake present, as at the time I was dabbling in tie-dyeing with synthetic dyes, and this book was nothing to do with that subject.
Fast forward to this year, and we think we might have a go at dyeing with nettles, and after hunting around and asking, I finally remember I have a book on the subject. I think I have reached the right stage, because those muddy colours I had dismissed before, now look nice natural muted colours.
We followed the instructions on nettle dyeing, which was essentially – go out with large dye saucepan and fill to the top with nettles, boil for a long time, strain, then use the juice to dye some wool which we pre mordented with alum.
What is particularly great about the book is that it had a chart of colours that we could expect, depending on what mordent we use, when the nettles were picked (autumn pickings give a different colour to spring), and what part of the nettle we used.. and we got the exact colour predicted. As you can see from our picture we turned white wool into golden beige. Really pleased with the result.
As I said, it is a shame this book is no longer available, but there are many others out there these days, and I might even invest in another (I always like to compare recipes when cooking!) – suggestions welcome. With this and our other adventure with woad, and so many more natural and easily obtained materials available, we are both really taken with this dyeing malarkey…can see us dabbling lots more.
My mum has just been given another box of onion peel dyed fleece and it is completely different to the colour we got when we tried, which was a sort of burn toffee colour, this is almost red or a very dark pink.
I was thinking of having another go at dyeing with nettles this week. I got a lovely khaki green when I last tried it back in August (see blog post), but I wasn’t sure what colour I would get at this time of year. So, you’ve answered that one for me!
I’ve got Natural Dyeing by Jennie Crook which I quite like but I think it might be a bit too much of a beginner’s book for you. I hadn’t done any natural dyeing when I bought it and it was a good book to get started with.
I notice Jenny Dean’s Wild Colour is available secondhand for a mere £50 on Amazon, although she has another book, The Craft of Natural Dyeing for only £5.99 which I quite like the look of. It covers space dyeing with natural dyes which I would love to have a go at…
Sue – did you use iron with the nettles last time? i think that changes the colour.. but cant remember… have to look it up again.
I might try J Deans other book, yes.. space dyeing sounds like fun
We have done some rainbow dyeing with artificial dyes.. but they are a lot easier to handle – mordent included etc.
Yes, I added a quarter teaspoon of iron (dissolved in hot water) to the dyebath at the end. It deepened the colour slightly which is what I wanted. It’s the green colour I used for the Baby Surprise Jacket (again, see blog).