Woolfest Archives - Jane Mercer Felt Artist

Can I extract the true red from madder roots ?

For a number of years, I have grown my own madder from a plant that I bought at woolfest from fiery felts. I have tended the plants carefully and as they matured started to harvest the roots. Here is my madder bed looking a bit weedy in the snow. So far using these madder roots I have only been able to achieve peachy reds which I find a bit frustrating. I thought I’d try again. First I read up about the factors which affect the colour extraction process for madder. I reread "Wild Color" by Jenny Dean along with the pages about madder on the website of the wild colours company. I also checked the history of dyeing with madder in the wonderful book "Natural Dye" by Dominique Cardon. What a lot of options there are. True red was the desired red colour to be obtained from madder…

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07/02/2021

Eco Dyeing / IFA / Wet felting / Woolfest

Now is the time for some contemplating

For the last few months I don’t seem to have found much time for felting or dyeing or even contemplating it. Shame I haven’t even found time for blog writing ! But why ? Spring in the garden and a plan to grow a lot of vegetables is one reason. Family time and holidays another. Time to reflect and really contemplate on where I am going and what to do next. What better place to do this than in All Saints church , Helmsley I am here all day anyway as I am looking after the Brigantia exhibition which is here until the 24th June. Sitting here, quietly thinking, and contemplating maybe things aren’t so bleak. I did go to the IFA AGM and here I attended a wonderful workshop…

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20/06/2018

Natural dyeing / Woolfest

Planting my dye garden

At woolfest in 2015 I bought three dye plants , Madder, Ladies Bedstraw and Rubekia from Fiery Felts. Here there are with all my other woolfest goodies. At the time I had nowhere to plant them so they stayed in their pots at my daughters. When I returned to the UK late 2015 and I looked for a spot in my garden where I could make a dye garden . I found a place which was nice and sheltered with a house wall at the back. The big snag was it was totally overtaken by vinca. This is a most dreadful invasive plant in my opinion , I have no idea why I ever planted it in the first place. So for the first few months of 2016 I attempted to kill the Vinca by covering it with some old carpets. I then dug it all out, well I tried hard to…

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10/07/2016

Eco Dyeing / Natural dyeing / Wet felting / Woolfest

Dyeing and colour balance

A number of weeks ago I made two pieces of felt to dye and decided to use the last of the flowering hawthorn in my garden . The flowers are so delicate. After dyeing there was some nice colour variation across the pieces . It's not very dramatic and I thought more colour contrast was needed, so I modified some areas with copper. This is where the colour balance problems with my camera started to become obvious. The same pieces , changed orientation , looking completely different colours , when photographed on different backgrounds. The truth , in my opinion , not as yellow as the white background , but significantly darker than the wood background. Apart from this I thought further differentiation was still needed so I modified a part of each with iron. Now I felt I'd gone to far , but there is no turning back unfortunately . Finally…

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03/07/2016

Sheep / Uncategorized / Woolfest

Woolfest 2016

This is my fourth visit to woolfest and it's as vibrant and colourful as ever . I thought this year I'd try and focus on the sheep. They of course being the star attraction. There are the real sheep, see these beautiful herdwicks- my favourites. And then there are the knitted sheep. The printed sheep The sheep puppets. And me trying my hand at being a sheep puppeteer. I loved these puppets , which were from the production of a 'Shepherd 's Life', at the theatre by the lake in Keswick. Very interestingly the sheep puppets had no legs ! On a slightly smaller scale needled felted sheep. A crocheted colourful sheep. And finally to finish, a dark wendesleydale sheep, relaxing and showing off her curls. As you can tell I had a great time as usual and will sure to be returning next year.

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26/06/2016