I’ve always been fascinated with natural dyes and lately I’ve started experimenting with them. my experiments with natural dyes started using indigo to dye some antique linen I bought at vintage markets.
The first thing I’ve learnt it’s that each fabric takes the dye in a different way, depending not only on the kind of fabric, but also on the amount of time it is exposed to the dye. Because I don’t have a huge space where to work with this technique and where to dry the fabric I can only dye in small batches. This means that most of my pieces can’t be repeated in an identical way. I actually really like this because I think it complements the irregularity of my way of block printing it. The final product is really unique, even when I’m able to make a few.
For the second experiment I did, I decided to use black rice on a small piece of organic cotton that I had left and that I previously block printed with a leaf pattern in copper. I love the pale pink/peach colour that the black rice created, it’s subtle and I like how works with the print. Unfourtunately I’m not sure how colourfast it can be, because I didn’t use any mordant on it.
