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22nd July 2021
So my plan fell at the first hurdle almost. My apologies to all of you who followed expecting a regular write up. I have been doing many experiments with madder, but of course I was completely sidetracked by one of my ideas. I am writing this up slowly on another page and it will be available on this blog when all those particular experiments are finally finished. It is fairly self contained but still requires much dyeing before I will have any constructive results and relates to the preparation of the roots once pulled out of the ground. My thanks go to Susan Dye and Ashley walker of Natures Rainbow…
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23rd July 2020 – Recipe #1
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6th September Recipe #7
Although I spent time in August dyeing up samples I have deliberately left the writing up until now – I’m in quarantine for 2 weeks so thought this would be a good opportunity to write up the next four recipes. Hope you don’t mind! I have never been very good at gardening – I have a terrific reputation for killing plants off, indoors or out. The few times I’ve tried to grow any they have all died on me at some point. Madder in particular I think I drown! I love to see them all growing though, particularly in the wild. In the late spring I watch all the scrubby…
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23rd July 2020 – Recipe #1
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9th August Recipe #6
So today is the final recipe from Helen Melvin’s Colours of the Earth. 4 recipes, 1 dyebath quite impressive. To complete the story of my City and Guilds, I took Part 1 only, Part 2 did not appeal as it was doing more and more artistic and distorted work and I wanted to produce 17th Century embroidery – Swete bags and sewing boxes, coifs and collars. It wasn’t going to take me down the road I wanted to go. After the initial shock I had enjoyed part 1 and met some fabulously artistic and textiley people, am really glad I did it. But it was time to move on. I…
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8th August – Recipe #5
This is the third bath following Helen’s recipe, I don’t know of anyone else giving you these options with a single bath. Once I started with the spinning and dyeing I was totally hooked, used to drive my son’s mad I think – certainly embarrassed one of them by taking my spinning wheel along to sports day and sitting spinning my silk merrily whilst all the running was going on – I did cheer at the relevant points of course! I have a Wee Peggy wheel, she’s lovely and very easy to transport around. Although not designed as a “portable” wheel, she’s a castle so will sit on the car…
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23rd July 2020 – Recipe #1
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7th August – Recipe #4
The City and Guilds course was a complete eye opener for me – both from an art point of view and textiles. I had really enjoyed chemistry at school, but didn’t fancy any of the careers associated with chemistry. So went into Catering instead. On the course we covered screen printing, batik, silk painting, all ideas to put a pattern down before then embellishing with stitch. This part I really enjoyed. Once I got over the “I can’t do art” I threw myself into the course and boy was the photocopier hot after I’d been designing!! My favourite was batik – I really wanted to try out Batik with natural…
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6th August Recipe #3
When I joined the reenactment society I was asked to give myself a character and learn everything I could that was pertinent. I’m pretty rubbish at acting so chose to be an embroideress – someone who could hide away and keep her head down even if talking! Plus I needed to learn about the profession rather than a person. Our local college at that time decided to run a 1 year City and Guilds Art and Design – Embroidery course, so I thought it might be useful and signed up. It didn’t really teach me embroidery – in terms of I wasn’t learning all the history and stitches – but…
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23rd July 2020 – Recipe #1
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29th July 2020 – Recipe #2
In 2000 I received my first major commission – from the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. As part of their new British Galleries they were dressing the Great Bed of Ware with everything required to give you a comfortable night – mattress, sheets, hangings, pillows, coverlet … I was asked to dye all the blackwork silks and make the tassels for the corners of the pillowcases. I was over the moon! The bed hangings were stunning – really vivid red and yellow all the red yarns being dyed by Eva Lambert in Scotland and the yellows dyed by the then dyer at Styal Mill in Cheshire. In 2010 Eva…
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23rd July 2020 – Recipe #1
In 1994 Jenny Dean’s The Craft of Natural Dyeing was published by Search Press, perfect timing for someone wanting to start producing handspun naturally dyed embroidery silks for their new life as a 17th Century Embroideress! My sons were 8 and 6 when we joined the Sealed Knot, too young for me to just leave and go on the battlefield so I needed to give myself a character and chose to be an embroideress. The eldest enjoyed the re-enactment events and became a fifer and drummer for the regiment, the younger hated them and started calling in favours from friends as he got older, just so he wouldn’t have to…
