dyeing with coffee

Continuing with our theme of dyeing with plants we can find nearby, or waste from the kitchen, we had a go at dyeing with coffee.  That is dyeing with the spent coffee grounds scraped out of the cafetiere. We saved them up in the freezer, and once freezer crisis was upon us,  used them up.

The process is simply a matter of boiling up the used grounds (making the house smell very strongly of coffee) leaving it over-night, straining it through a fine strain (I guess coffee filter paper would be the thing, we used kitchen towel), then the wool went in the dye bath and heated for an hour or so, and left over-night.

In the top picture is the straight coffee, making a mellow golden colour, and the exhaust, a paler muddier version,  shown on the right.

And then we tried another dye bath and added an iron modifier.

I was quite surprised at the soft green – iron is sad to ‘sadden’ the colours, but I wasn’t expecting a green.  It’s nice though.

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woad bed

Ever since we started experiementing with natural dyes, I have fancied a dyers garden – filled with woad, weld, and madder and all the plants I could need.  It’s not quite worked out like that – for a start we just dont have one huge patch of ground I want to dedicate to dyes alone.

So far we have dyed with weeds and hedgerow harvests, and the woad was tucked into a corner of the veg patch.  Madder has taken ages for me to get hold of, until a kind forum member sent me some plantlets – and they are still in pots  until they get a bit bigger and as for weld  - we have decided we don’t need it as we can get really bright yellows from the exhaust dyes from onion skins.

We would like to grow woad on a grander scale though, as dyeing with woad is fun, and blue is a desirable colour, and deeper blue would be better still. Besides the flowers are a nice bright yellow, so look nice in the garden.

So we have been digging up the lawn again (no bad thing as well still have too much lawn) and made a woad bed.  Into this we planted a couple of sorry plants left over from harvesting last year, and scattered a gazillion seeds (harvested from last year’s plants)- and you can see Molly is helping to firm them in.  I’ve also sown some woad seeds indoors as a backup.

I’m hoping for lots of woadlets.

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the room of doom

Over the last couple of days we have been tackling the room of doom aka the spare room.

‘Spare’ makes it seem surplus to requirements – not so – we have both worked from home in that room, it is the main storage area of our home dyed wool, in various stages of  process, our dvd and cd library, and alas, a general dumping area.

The cats, Molly and Pete have been helping.  And by helping I means curling up and lying down in the middle of everything  - in Pete’s case, and playing happy adventures climbing through the loom and over teetering boxes with glee in Molly’s.

But, after many days, lots of sorting out, being ruthless, building shelves and reorganising, we now have a large space in the middle of the room – revealing the hideous swirling brown and orange nightmare carpet we inherited in all its ‘glory’.  One day we shall change it.. but it seems far down the priority list at the moment.

Ultimately our plans are to make a study / craft room.  With a big table to sew/model/craft at, my desk an paperwork mountain in the corner,  a little wood burner installed in the fireplace, the sofa bed will double as guest sleepage, and a chair so we can spin or weave or  knit or craft and keep each other company as we craft , listening to the radio or music etc.  I did wonder if I had over subscribed the room with too many uses, but now we have shifted everything about, it actually seems possible, as it is a large room, and all that shelving takes advantage of the high ceilings.   (Why do we have high ceilings upstairs and low ceilings downstairs?)

but before we play musical tables and set ourselves up there, we have to tackle our son’s room – or more to the point the floor – which is decidedly bouncey and if anything like the floor that came with the room of doom, the joists  will have been eaten by the delightful death watch beetle, and will need replacing – with all that that entails.

So – we have been opening boxes of things not yet unpacked since we moved in, and making decisions and freecycling etc, because the floor of my son’s room needs replacing. you know how it is.

There is a goal at the end of all this hard graft, and it is that craft room, with the wood burner and sofa and all the craft things… and then no doubt the room of doom will become the room of loom.

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woad exhaust

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).

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woad dyeing

The hastily pre frost harvesting of woad (we never did have a frost, but there you go) was duly processed, again using Sally’s excellent instructions.

On the right, the undyed yarn (Devon Closewool wool), centre: woad, and on the left, pre dyed with onion skins, it started as a zingy yellow, before being dipped in the woad dye bath.

I’m really pleased with the green, as a good green like that is not that easy to obtain from natural dyes, only usually by overdyeing as we have done here.  Lincoln green (men in tights etc) is weld followed by woad – not sure what onion followed by woad is called… Devon green maybe…

This was our entire woad harvest, but only about 4 large plants.  Next year we plan to make a dedicated woad bed, and why not when the flowers are so pretty, and the woad plants wont have to fight for space with the veggies. I can see we are many years away from getting bored of dyeing with woad. After a bit of faffing about whisking and getting the oxygen out etc, eventually you have a dye bath into which you drop white wool, leave it for a few minutes, pull it out and it looks green, then slowly turns blue as the air gets to it.

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pre frost harvest

Finally it feels like October.  Last night we lit the woodburner for the first time this autumn, and today was sunny and crisp.  Tonight they forecast frost, and so we rushed about doing our usual prefrost panic harvesting.

As per usual, we have not got around to harvesting the woad, and frost is supposed to damage it, or affect the colour at least.  I don’t know if it does or not, but I do know that ever since we first grew it, we have always ended up harvesting in a rush, usually by torchlight as a frost comes down.

Today we were organised (thanks to recording that nice Mr Brain the weatherman) and prewarned we have woad harvested before nightfall. And, moved one of the mints into the greenhouse, actually closed the greenhouse (though the tomatoes seem to prefer the door open, I have insisted), picked the last few runner beans, and a big lot of mint, which I have chopped and smothered in syrup to store through the winter.

We probably should have actually got on with the woad dyeing, but being a lovely crisp day, there were veg patches wanting digging, and a duck to help into the freezer, and anyway, it has become a tradition…  the woad is now in a bucket in the kitchen waiting it’s turn.

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dyeing with comfrey

A few weeks ago, one of my new cuckoo marans pullets started laying lovely dark brown eggs, but not in the designated area, instead she made a nest in the undergrowth. And because of my rummaging in this prickly heap, to collect these early eggs (before she got the hang of it and moved to the hen house), I was fairly aware of the plant. So, when I was idly flicking through my natural dye book, and noticed the same plant, comfrey, it seemed like a sign.  Well, perhaps more the fact the young grower cockerels were eating it now it was squashed might have been the sign..

So we hastily harvested the rest and into the dye pot it went.

Our experiments with natural dyeing with comfrey, on wool,  - on the left – a pale goldeny khaki from using alum mordant, and the next three dips, no alum but iron modifier. Very attractive tones I think.

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exhausting red

Last week I did some dyeing with all in one synthetic dyes.  Much that I have a passion for dyeing with natural materials, I’m ok with the artificial ones too.

The key, I think, is to use it all up.  That way, all of the dye goes onto the fibre, and not down the drain and into the environment. Something that can be done at home, but I doubt any big time commercial producers are worried about.

To use it up, I use the dye bath again, after the first dyeing, and again and again, until there is no colour left.  How many dips you can get depends on how strong a colour the first dye was, and how much dyestuff used.

The results you get after the first round are called exhausts, and you can obtain many different shades as a result – and the best thing is they will all go well together, having come from the same dye pot.

So, I was after a bright red, and that was the first dip, the second a sort of raspberry red, that I quite like, and lastly pale pink as the dye runs out.  I carefully record what weight of wool was used for weight of dye, and the same information for the exhausts.  I keep samples in my dye book, so that I can repeat the colour when I need to make it again.

The fibre is bagged up and labelled as to what breed the wool came from and date, and is ready to be carded and go on to be part of a future project.  I have a scary number of these bags… but actually they are all a package of happy to me. And the colours obtained from exhausts are inspiring – often not colours I would initially choose to make (I’m not a pink sort of person), but then I think about what I could do with it, what it would blend well with.. and it goes from there.

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