Sunday, September 19, 2010

Dyeing, Blackberry way....

There has been a glut of blackberries in the garden. We have already made about 12 jars of jam and there must be about 5kgs of them in the freezer. And still they keep coming. Earlier this year I acquired some fabrics whose texture appealed to me so I had my first go at dyeing pieces of them.....with Blackberries.


They did not turn out as purple as I had hoped, and at first I felt quite disappointed. But having looked at them since I do rather like the colour. I'd describe it as a light fuchsia. I am now thinking of attempting to use Tumeric as a dye. However, I now know that Blackberries are good for creating various pinks and are good for staining saucepans!
In future, I'd like to make more fabric cards or fabric art. I have ordered some fabric manipulation books from Amazon to get me started, and I cannot wait for them to arrive. 
Today, at a car boot/yard sale, I bought 3 rolls of cotton/gauze like fabric in natural colours for a ridiculously cheap price, so I have plenty of fabrics to play around with now. 


More Angel and fairy images to come later today.

2 comments:

  1. That's great! However, when dyeing with natural products like berries, did you know you need to use a mordant on the fibres to get the dye to "stick"? You get much deeper colours that way, and the shade can vary depending on what you use. It makes the dye fast, both light fast and water fast.

    Here's a useful link in case you don't know about this:

    http://www.tahlia.org/blogger/postpics/dye/blackberrydye.htm

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  2. Oh such GORGEOUS fabrics!!!! THANK YOU so much for your awesome comment on my blog about the frame!!! I'm SO thrilled so many like it...I'm enjoying glancing over at it before I mail it out!!!! You've made me smile!!!

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