Welcome to Dye School

NEW
Introduction to Natural Dyeing is now free to access!

The aims of this school are to teach people to use locally grown, natural, plant dyes to colour wool safely and to encourage experimentation. 

I started playing with dyes at school, where we made our own yellow azo-dye, this experiment has now been banned as the chemicals used are not particularly safe! I dyed a piece of cotton bright yellow. I did various other dyeing experiments over the years, but never really found my focus.

About 10 years ago, I started to experiment with natural, homegrown plant dyes. This was fun and I created a huge range of colours, but many were fugitive dyes, which wash out – not that I knew that at the time. In the Summer of 2019, I was asked to join a group of pre-historical re-enacters, to be their textile specialist. Finally, I feel I have found my ‘home’. I now focus on only the plant dyes known to be used at this time and for over 3,000 years, until the invention of more reliable synthetic dyes. The plants are Woad, Weld and Madder and you can create a huge range of colours from these 3 plants.

When dyeing wool, I try to be as environmentally friendly as possible.  This means that I use as little heat as possible, whilst getting reasonably quick results, initially at least, and keep water use down to a minimum.  I have also developed some fermentation dyeing and solar dyeing, but these all take more time and space, which is limiting for many of us.

I have run many workshops over the years and found that in the time frame available, we had to rush the heating processes, but people spent a great deal of time waiting…. Which is not my idea of teaching.  Groups were also limited to 4 – 6.  Additionally, everyone was travelling by car to a remote part of Dorset or we would all meet somewhere, also requiring extensive car use, not exactly environmentally friendly.  Therefore, it seemed to make sense to start an on-line dye school.

I can also keep costs down as there is no venue charge and you can learn flexibly in your own time.

Alternatively you can buy dye kits or materials from me.

Each course includes:
An instructional video
Recipe sheet
Health and Safety sheet

In recognition of World Earth Day my first course has gone live!

Courses:

Introduction to Natural Dyeing

Future planned courses are:

Dyeing with Weld,

Dyeing with Woad.

Dyeing with Madder.

Using Rhubarb as a mordant

Modifiers