This is a quick blog to tell you more about dyeing with weld – one of our most ancient and powerful of dye plants. Until the 1930’s it was still commercially grown in this country and I hope one day we will return to it as it is so very generous in colour and so useful as a base for making lots of other colour – most especially green when it is combined with woad.

It’s just coming into season now and is very easy to grow – liking poor soils but you can also find it growing wild along rivers and hedgerows. You can also order it dried from places like George Weil 

1)To begin – chop up the weld. It’s the stems and leaves that  give most colour.

2) Make a bundle and add to an old pan

3) Cover with hot water and gradually bring to the boil – you will smell and see the wonderful yellow seeping through, it’s magic! Keep the dye bath on a simmer as the colour is released from the plant material.

4) Prepare the cloth you want to dye by wetting it thorougly. Then add it to the dye bath.

5) Keep the bath at a simmer and move the cloth around so that it takes the colour evenly.

6) Carry on until you are happy with the colour – remember it will dry a shade lighter.

Do get in touch with any questions. Hope this goes really well for you and you have fun, Sarah x

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Rhubarb is one of my favourite ever plants to dye with and one of the first I ever discovered. I grow lots on my allotment because it is so useful and versatile and ofcourse delicious to eat as well!

To make dye from this plant you need to dig up the root and after cleaning off most of the soil chop it into little pieces – as you do this you will start to smell it’s delicous sweet smell which will continue to scent your fabric.

Once you have chopped up your rubarb you can place it in the centre of a clean piece of fabric – the kind of fabric that will let the dye pass through easily so any kind of light cotton is perfect – I’ve used some old sheeting.

Take your bundle and put in an old pot and cover with boiling water – put it on the heat and let it simmer – you will soon see the golden yellow colour starting to ooze out.

While your dye bath is simmering you can get on with preparing your fabric.

For this demo I’ve used organic calico but you can experiment with a wide range of fabrics – I’ve even dyed nylons and plastics successfully with rhubarb.

Before you add your fabric to the dye pot make sure it’s wetted through thoroughly – this will help it take the dye better.

You can leave your fabric in the dye bath for as long or as little as you like – the longer you leave it the deeper the tones and as with all the best cooking, the slower you take it the better the results will be. This is the colour I got after leaving the fabric in the dye bath overnight (with the heat off of course)

Here is the surprise bit – if you would like to turn your fabric a reddy pink – make up a solution of soda crystals (just add a few tablespoons to a bowl of water and mix well)

then dip your fabric into it. Here you can see the before and after – it’s always magic and takes me by surprise – one of the wonders of natural dyeing!

I do hope this demo gives you a clear step-by-step approach that will give you the confidence to have a go.

Do let me know how you get on with your rhubarb dyeing and get in touch @sarahburnspatterns@gmail.com if you have any questions.

Have fun!

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In the meantime I was thinking about all the really great plants much closer to home which can also make gorgeous colours. I thought I would share some of these ordinary wonderful things with you and show you how you could – very simply make lovely colours from these very common plants.

Here are a few plants which I hope you can get hold of really easily –

From left to right: Dock Leaves, Cow Parsley, Willow leaves and St Johns Wort stalks (that’s the plant with the pretty yellow flowers, also known as Hypericum. It’s leaves have got a very distinctive spicy sweet smell)

If you don’t have a garden I hope you can ask a friend or neighbour if they maybe have some or take a sneaky handful from the park.

All you need to make your natural dyes apart from the plant matter is some fabric and a pot to cook them up in.

First roughly chop up your leaves and stalks with a pair of scissors

Next – grab a pot. You can use one from the kitchen because non of these leaves are harmful and you can give the pot a good scrub out afterwards.

Next – Fill the pot with hot water and bring to the boil. Then reduce the heat and keep on a low simmer.

Now we can prepare your fabric. I’ve used little squares of calico – it’s just been washed. I haven’t used any mordants or anything special beforehand. You can use any spare cotton, linen or silk that you have to hand – just make sure it’s washed and clean.

Wet your fabric first before adding it to the dye bath.

Keep your dye bath hot and keep adding water so that it doesn’t boil dry. Do take the pot off the heat, for example overnight and just let the fabric steep in the dye – this is a great way to extract the colour.

After 24 hours your fabric should look something like this – the Dock leaves have turned the square of calico brown, the Cowparsley has dyed the fabric an almost illuminous yellow, the Willow leaves have given pink and the St John’s Wort stems a lovely browny red.

To finish off – run your fabric under the tap until the water runs clear. This way you know that any excess dye has been removed.

The process is slow but super simple. Once you’ve had a play with little scraps of fabric you could try larger pieces to make handkerchiefs, scarves, napkins, pillowcases….

And you could try leaving the fabric in for even longer – this is really SLOW textiles and the slower you go the better the result.

I do hope this blog makes sense and gives you clear step by step instructions for  dyeing your own fabric with common garden plants – please get in touch if you have any questions.

I really hope you have a go and please let me know how you get on – your results may not be the same as mine as different soils and weathers have an effect on the plant material but I hope you get something that you like X

Have fun X

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My friend and collaborator on the Steyning Imprint,  Alice keeps a flock of sheep. To me they always seemed like rather strange creatures to be interested in – wonderful as lambs (and very tasty) but rather stupid looking as they got older. But this was before I learned to love wool.

Every summer Alice pays the shearer to shear her sheep to avoid the dreaded ‘fly-strike’ (basically the poor sheep are eaten alive by maggots) and faces with the perennial dilemma of what to do with the wool. One summer we had a huge felting party with the kids and other times Alice uses the wool to wrap around fruit trees, stuff in her attic as insulator – she even used one fleece to fill a cushion…

In all the small villages and hamlets around us in West Sussex there are the clues to this one great English Industry – Cottages with names like Spinners, Woolgatherers, Weavers… My old Vicar is called Graham Woolgar (Wolgatherer). His ancestors are in the graveyard and on the walls of Steyning Town Football Club. But very little of this once great industry remains.

Ofcourse there are still a few craft spinners and fab places like Weald and Downland, Louise Spong at South Down Yarns, Debbie at Plawhatch keeping these valuable skills alive. But the real problem is there is there doesn’t seem to be much market for the local small scale wool being produced around us.

Infact small holders farmers we know are burning their wool because there is nothing else they can do with it. A natural, almost free product with great properties – water proof, hyperalleregnic, carbon neutral, compostable is literally going up in smoke because we no longer have small scale production chains to make the best use of this wonderful local resource.

Inspired by the likes of people like Louise Spong, by Alices’ husbandry and  all round ingenuity – last summer we decided to do something about it; stopping using plastic in our cushion pads (that’s what polyester is) and replacing it with wool instead.

We did not know what a labour of love this would be but as well as being a great deal of work it’s also helped me totally fall in love with wool and become alive to it’s many qualities.

To begin with we put the word out that we would be happy to take any unwanted fleeces and Alice’s shed soon filled up…

Processing the masses of the ‘waste’ wool our small valley had to offer from the flocks of people like Ronnie and the Vics at Annington Farm meant that first we had to find somewhere to store it all (sorry Daniel). Then we began by cutting out the worst bits of gunk (you can imagine ) then soaking the wool in a succession of scalding baths to remove the lanolin (the natural product made by sheep to keep them waterproffed – such amazing stuff).

After many of these we use a final bath of lavender water to scent the wool. We then fill pillow cases with the damp wool and leave them on the gentle heat. Then the business of teasing out the wool begins – it’s rather lovely to find crushed between your fingers on a dark winters evening – a summers hay grass…

Most of the the fleeces we were donated were Jacob’s sheep as Ben granny was a spinner and loved Jacob’s for their long staple (the length of the wool fibres). These Jacob’s have gradually made their way down the valley (they are great fence jumpers) and even Alice has a few now.

Somewhere during all these hours working with wool – pulling, tearing, stroking, teasing – I have fallen in love with what is the most amazing natural creation: soft, strong, pliable and resiliant. It makes me feel really happy to think we’ve saved even a small amount of this amazing natural resource and put it to good use.

So if you’re in need our cushion pad or two – do have a look at our cushion pads. They’re available in our standard sizes – 45cm x 45cm and 35cm x 50cm but we’re also really happy to sew up any size cushion you like. We think they’re really reasonably priced and offer a fantastic alternative to plastic polyester pads.

They’re all hand-sewn (by us!) using 100% organic calico.

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