#dyegarden

[taacabralstudio]

Madder matters ❤️

It was worth the wait - the most wonderful thing is this Ruivinha root, or Madder aka Rubia Tinctorum 🌱 Valeu a pena esperar - coisa mais maravilhosa é essa raiz da Ruivinha, or Madder aka Rubia Tinctorum ❣️

[roundtripgoods]

Growing indigo: This is the second summer I have grown the variety Persicaria tinctoria. I have a small plot, about 5′x3′ in my right of way by the street. The plants are now blooming beautiful hot pink flowers and collecting these leaves mid to late september will be my third harvest of leaves. With what I’ve grown I have been able to dye 3 shirts, a lb. or so of yarn, and attempt a pigment extraction process twice. The first time didn’t work, so I’ll harvest the last leaves after they are done going to seed and attempt the process again.The last three images show dyeing a shirt with the raw leaves, a very simple process, and what the wool yarn and silk looked like after a fresh indigo dye. Deep blues that indigo is known for come sfrom a fermented indigo while dyeing with fresh leaves gives different teal and greener hues like these. Next year, I aim to have more silk items on hand to dye, and get better at extracting the pigment from the leaves so I will have a shelf stable pigment for later on. 

[somepinkflowers]

{{ #takinginventory 🌼 #whatthedeerdidnteat 🦌🍽 #coreopsis #tickseed 🌼 Gold & bronze tickseed from my #dyegarden 🌱🌱🌱 }} It’s not all #somepinkflowers 🌸 over here. 💕 👋🏽☺️🌸🌼💕 One reason I do not travel L O N G E R is this :: #mygarden 🌸🌼💕 & the more frequent droughts & the hungry wildlife 🦌🦝🐿 … So far the grasshoppers have been my archenemy again this spring but So Far 🦗🦗🦗have left my #herbaceous #perrenial coreopsis alone … #fingerscrossed 🤞🏽 (at Saint Augustine, Florida) https://www.instagram.com/p/CdvOxvoulhi/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[taacabralstudio]

Persicaria tinctoria aka Indigo plant seeds 🌱🌀💙

[roundtripgoods]

Fresh Leaf Indigo Dyeing

This spring I planted Persicaria tinctoria indigo seeds from Blue Light Junction farm in the easement garden beds of our yard here in Denver. The first week of August, I researched the process, found a thrifted silk shirt to dye, and began what is often called the Salt process! I didn’t have a ton of plants, but just enough I thought, for dyeing one item.

It is a pretty straight forward process and while there are many variations, the following is the overview of how I dyed with the fresh leaves. Because there is a lot of scrunching and moving around of the fiber, wool isn’t recommended to use, and cotton doesn't take to the dye very much (without special mordants), so silk is the preferred fiber to use for fresh leaf dyeing. 

I gathered my tools and set up a workspace, then harvested all the leaves I had grown. I washed them in ice cold water, then picked them off their stems. I soaked the stems in water so they could grow roots for replanting. The wet leaves came to 220 grams and I think my shirt weighed about 100 grams. 

I then put these leaves in a big steel bowl with about 2 tsp. salt, my wetted silk shirt, s small scrap of cotton and began kneading the lot of it like a ball of dough. The three pictures inside the bowl are at 5, 10, and 20 minutes. I kneaded for 25 minutes the fibers with the leaves and sure enough the fiber started turning a beautiful turquoise. This color is so unique as you can’t achieve it with dried or powdered indigo pigment. Creating a vat with the dried pigment is the most common form of dyeing with the plant, and is a long process. After kneading for 25 minutes, I gently rinsed the leaves off the shirt and let it hang out of direct light. I washed in gently with soap after another day. When it was done and dry, I immediately saw that it would be perfect for my mother in law, who I am now staying with. She looks amazing in the blue hues and I am so glad to gift something unique to her, with the color from my garden. 

In the second to last image, you can see the color difference from cotton scrap and the silk shirt. There are ways of treating cotton with protein milks (soy and cow) to ‘trick’ the indigo into latching on to the protein within those milks, that are embedded into the fibers. (So much to still learn!)

This was so fun and really a big deal for me as I had seen others growing a dye garden and dyeing with their indigo, and I was unsure if the plant would do ok in my climate (and my city dirt). 

If my plants keep growing, I might be able to harvest another batch of leaves and dye another item. I am going to keep reading about other ways to use the leaves and methods of creating not just dyes, but dry pigments and other ways of capturing color for creative applications. 

[herbanwytch]

To understand the beautiful dye garden I work in you need to have the soul of a Medieval monk. You need patience, you need to listen and look for clues. None of these plants give up their secrets easily...probably the first dyes were discovered when harvesting herbs, weeds and vegetables for food , paints and medicines as infusions would have been the simplest way to create tinctures and cordials. We have purple cabbage in this garden to make dye from and the roots of the buttercup create a glorious purple dye... the Queen Anne’s lace a brilliant yellow. The commonest of “ weeds” produce some of the most brilliant hues and I am grateful to learn these mysteries, these old ways. To me , a weed is simply a plant that is misunderstood by a human and I’m grateful to work in a garden that is full of them❤️ the plants in this garden are some of the oldest in the world and some of the most useful. #dyeplants #dyegarden @westernreserveherbsociety garden #bethschreibmangehring #weeds #cottagecore (at Cleveland Botanical Garden) https://www.instagram.com/p/CQgpx7ggyPE/?utm_medium=tumblr

[herbanwytch]

I am fortunate to be the Co-chair of the Dye Section of our beautiful herb garden down @westernreserveherbsociety garden at the @clegarden . Working in this garden is a joy and an adventure given that it’s actually the least easily understood of the sections that make up our garden. The most common question? “ Why are you growing a garden full of weeds? “ Dye plants are some of the oldest of the useful plants and like many of the medicinal plants, they ARE “ weeds!” As a result, the dye garden flows in a way that’s more natural and less conformed to the rigidity of a formal garden pattern. It’s almost impossible to tame and that’s because the beauty of these plants isn’t necessarily in the flowers, but instead in the mystery of the roots, leaves and stems, and what happens when you use a bit of alchemy and mordant to pull out the pigments and fix the colors. The yellow flowers you see here are from the Woad plant. The Woad plant doesn’t create a yellow dye...it creates a blue pigment from the leaves, and in fact it yields the face paint that the ancient Celts used to paint their faces blue before battle as well as a beautifully subtle blue dye for yarns and textiles. When it comes to natural plant dyes, the thinking these days is #farmtocloset and all of these easily misunderstood plants are finally getting honored as they should! #plantdye #plantdyes #dyegarden #dyegardening #alchemy #science #woad #woadblue #bethschreibmangehring #asanctuarycalledhome #potagersforasmallplanet (at The Herban Inn) https://www.instagram.com/p/COvMKEiJo_2/?igshid=l2uhran7br2u

[elefteriamantzorou]

This is a Buddleja, covered in snow! See my books on Amazon here: bit.ly/elefteria and keep reading about the plant! I took this photo in Tourkovounia hill. Buddleja is a dye plant - its leaf and flower will dye fibers yellow. Its resistance to light and oxidation is medium. You can also obtain green shades, with proper modification. Our school offers an online course on natural dyeing, at 50E only. DM us for details. Photo taken by me, all rights reserved. #butterflybush #lilac #wilddyes #dyegarden #urbangardening #buddleja #buddleia #foraging #rewilding #primitiveskills #sustainablefashion #dyersofinstagram #naturaldye #plantdye  #naturaldyes #naturaldyersofinstagram #naturaldyeing #ecodye #ecodyeing  #distancelearning #herbnerd #plantallies #textileartist #ecoartist #veganfashion #ecofashionista #slowfashionmovement #majestic_macros (at Áno Kypséli) https://www.instagram.com/p/CLd8Tl6F0uB/?igshid=1290ydkg8vgui