I've been intrigued by the idea of growing my own plant dyes for some time now, since I undertook a project using natural dyes during my art foundation course in early 2012. I've read some wonderful books about natural plant dyes, growing them, using them and the slow textiles movement, and having successfully dyed fabrics with dyes sourced from the vegetable isles in supermarkets, I really wanted to start growing my own plants and ultimately making my own dyes.
Last weekend we had our last blast of warm weather for the foreseeable future and I took the opportunity to get outside and get my garden going. As the seasons change over and autumn settles in, it was also a great time to hit up the garden centres for some bargain plant sales.
The raised planters have been built using old cement manholes stacked up on top of each other.
French Lavender
Yellow Onions, these will be harvested for their skins as well as then being eaten!
Camomile, another plant which can be used for dyes as well as an edible source.
St Johns Wort
It'll be another year perhaps before these are ready to harvest for dye purposes and it won't be until then before they flower again but I'm already excited for this prospect! I've taken a lot of my inspiration in this field from India Flint, she has really created an amazing collection of naturally dyes textiles exploring not only colour but pattern. For me however, being a Brit, I found a lot of the plants she used aren't native to little old England and this was something I was quite interested in, whilst this book by Sasha Duerr provided some really great information and inspiration about growing your own native plant dyes, a book I would highly recommend.
Before you point it out, I'm aware French Lavender isn't native to Britain but we already have some lavender growing in our garden and I thought it would be interesting to compare the two types to see whether their colours would vary.
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