woad 3

Well finally my woad was ready for harvesting and I made a special trip to the allotment with my secateurs.
I’d been chatting to another woadie in Frome, who had told me that rather than going through the very lengthy process of extracting the pigment, I could in fact use the fresh woad leaves to make a more delicate shade of dye. It gives subtle spearmint shades rather than the blue normally associated with indigo. I had seen a description of this process being applied to fresh indigo leaves, so decided to give it a go.

Even this process was fairly slow and time consuming:
chopping leaves,

heating water and steeping the leaves (careful not to let it get too hot), adding soda ash and sodium hydrosulphate, whisking for ages and ages as the froth turned blue and then back to green again, but finally the dye bath was ready to use. I dipped my prepared cloth and watched the magic process of pulling the cloth out of the bath a greeny/yellow colour and watching as the exposure to air turned it blue-ish.

Unfortunately there wasn’t really enough dye to make repeated dippings to get more intensity of colour, but I hung them all out to dry anyway.
Sadly by the time they had dried they were much paler and by the time they had been properly washed and rinsed they just look like whites that got into the wrong wash…
Oh well, it was fun to try, but probably not something I’m going to make into a regular activity.

work in progress

Around this time of year I start to panic that I won’t have any work to show when we open our doors for the SouthBank Arts Trail. One of my reasons for starting this blog was to record my work and reassure myself that I am, in fact, doing something even though it may be quite slow.

These are two almost finished pieces. Just that tricky decision – is it finished or not? Then I need to think of a way of presenting them. Current thinking is spraymounted onto board, but I need to do some experiments before I commit to something that may ruin them!
I trudged into town yesterday to buy some machine embroidery thread. (Bristol is oddly ill-supplied with creative needlework materials.)
I have been playing around with stitching into plastic carrier bags. I like the idea of recycling plastic bags and, you never know, they may soon be a scarce resource! Maybe in fifty years time plastic carrier bags will be exhibited in museums as cultural artefacts, monuments to the prolific foolishness of the twentieth century. Of course, they will have to store them carefully in acid-free tissue paper to stop them from fading and degrading in the light.

woad

I was given some woad seeds for Christmas by lovely friends who know my passion for indigo. Woad is a similar plant to indigo, but native to Europe whereas indigo came originally from Asia (and gradually superseded the local product). I’ve only ever bought and used synthetic indigo so far, so I’m very excited about growing and producing my own dye.

Stu has agreed to let me have a little bit of space to grow it on the allotment, and Good Friday seems an appropriate day for sowing. The directions on the packet are a bit sparse so I have found some interesting stuff on the internet about growing and using woad.

Just got to sit back now and wait for the little shoots to appear!

where to start?

I don't think I'm a natural blogger. I have resisted this for a long time. Have kept diaries in the past and always been keenly depressed by re-reading them.

However, I have recently been inspired by the vast numbers of creative blogs out there - notably knitting, but other things too and thought it might be a good way of reviewing my work and encouraging myself that I have actually done something.


So, just to get me started:

In 2007:
I finished a quilt I had been working on since moving to Bristol

I did quite a bit of knitting for babies.

At the end of the summer I did some indigo dyeing and now have a pile of fabrics I need to do something else with:


For Christmas I was given two skeins of silk cashmere from SkeinQueen (Thanks M&J) which I have knitted into a pretty scarf.

This has taken me so long to get into anything like a format I am prepared to publish that I don't know how long it will take me to come back, but I think I'm just going to have to post as it is and tweak later.