Wednesday 12 January 2011

Magical indigo dyeing


One day before the end of 2010 we had a wonderful evening with the magical process of indigo dyeing. Heather invited us wool craft women in her house where we occupied the kitchen. We were a bunch of 4 women: Heather, Alison, Gillian and me, Laryna. We enjoyed the long preparation of the indigo dye-bath, which took more then 1 hour. For the dyeing afterwards we had many different natural fibers like sheeps wool, handspun lama wool, mashine spun cashmere, bamboo fibers and silk fibers.
The magic in this process is the changing of the colour when the wool after been dyed gets in contact with oxygen: Then it changes from green shades into more and more blueish shades, depending how intense the dye-bath is and how many fibers have allready been dyed in the dye-bath.

Here you see lama wool after been dyed, just in the process of changing its colour.


Heather had some yellow wool dyed with meadowsweet. We dyed it over and a beautiful green appeared..


This photo shows the indigo dyed wool on natural white sheeps wool and the over dyed green sheeps wool.

Thank you Heather for this great experience and the lovely evening in your place.