NATURAL DYES....my new obsession

So Ive always loved loved all natural things and since textiles is my life! Ive decided that natural dyes are my thing. I would say I got super excited about it last year when I did a natural dyes workshop at my studio. I loved it. I had a recent client project to work on and the client Karyn, from the workroom 
Its a lovely sewing store in toronto where she sells fabrics and many other textile things as well as sewing classes which is super exciting. Anyways, she loves natural dyes and so I decided to experiment a little myself....these were some of my samples:

These two were dyed using eucalyptus leafs. The first one had no mordants and the leafs were fresh and only soaked for one day. The grey tones came from an iron mordant added to the bath while cooking. 

The second one had dried leafs and the were soaked for two days and the fabric was also pre-mordant with alum and left over night soaking. The colors were def brighter with the second batch and the wools came out orange. :D The grey tones once again come from the iron mordant added to the batch.

These are my samples from my avocado batch. I presoaked and smashed the pits and boiled them before putting in my fabric. No mordants were used. The peachy colors come from the pure avocado pits and the more pinkish colors have a bit of LAC also a natural dye, It is a resinous substance produced mainly on the banyan tree by the Laccifer lacca, a scale-shaped insect. 

These are prints made with fresh eucalyptus leafs and seeded eucalyptus branch pounded on wet fabric.

 

The prints above are made by smashing the avocado pits into fabric directly. I used stencils for some of the more defined shapes.

I decided to try dying with the eucalyptus bark so I soaked it for one day and pre cooked it. Fabrics were pre mordant with alum but the colors were a faint beige. For the pink ones I just added LAC again and the alum made the pinks brighter. The other side contains the wool from the second  pre mordant eucalyptus batch as well as some wool from a Madder Root and pomegranate batch.

These were made from pomegranate skins pre soaked and fabric was also mordant with alum. The other side is a mix of the pomegranate and Madder Root. I also boiled the Madder before to give me more brown tones.

These are just the yarns with all the pretty colors together that I got from the different dyes. Dont they just look lovely together!

I love the silver tones I got from using iron as a mordant with the eucalyptus!

This is a work in progress :D avocado pits crushed directly onto fabric, the thread was also dyed in the bath. Ill come back to it when I decide where Im going with it haha

Anyways.....I rambled on but I really do love natural dyes...try them! There are so many sources to work from and its simply the best.

Happy dyeing!!!