It is amazing how many colours you can get out of one plant, in the case of woad. Having dyed a nice gentle blue, and achieved a bright green by overdyeing, using woad in the traditional way, another, less exciting colour can be obtained by exhaust dyeing.
The leaves that were strained when dyeing with woad, were put through another round in the dye pot. They were boiled up in fresh water for about an hour, then left to sit, then strained and the liquid reheated, a skein of wool added, and simmered for another hour then left overnight.
Last time we did this the resulting shade was a muted pale pinky colour, so this deep coppery colour was a pleasant surprise. We followed with a further dip and got the paler golden shade. And that was that for this year’s woad harvest. Pretty satisfying, and now I have more wool in my natural dyed stash (never a bad thing).
beautiful colours
thanks
wow!!! Woad is clearly a whole palatte, you don’t need anything else to dye with. I’m going to have to try and grow some in a pot!
You are so clever
Have you tried dyeing with other natural products (I’m sure you have). Amazing that so many shades have come from one plant.
yep – im on a natural dyeing adventure. comfrey gave nice dark greens,,,,
natural dyeing is so cool. any good book recommendations for the basics? I’ve not done much more than onion skins.
yep
wild colour by jenny Dean