Eco Dyeing Archives - Page 3 of 3 - Jane Mercer Felt Artist

Eco dyeing here I come

I am delighted to be taking part next week in a workshop with Fabienne Rey, organised by From the Earth Textiles at Art Van Go . So this week I have been getting organised. First I need lots of silk and wool fabrics . I made a couple of felts myself , and had the good luck to come across a silk shirt in a charity shop. It's also possible to eco dye mordanted cotton , and I have a number of different cotton fabrics mordanted with a variety of mordants , including alum and gall nuts. Then of course lots of cotton , linen and wool threads . I have had to scrounge among my friends for sufficient tin cans but I did have a nice collection of rusty iron, collected on my wanderings in the Lake District . These are complimented by a small length of copper pipe which…

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12/06/2016

British wool fibres / Eco Dyeing / machine stitching / Natural dyeing / Stitches / Wet felting

Felting ready for dyeing

I have been preparing a couple of felts for dyeing. The inspiration is some rocks. Thinking through a plan in my note-book for the felts and fibres. And laying out ready for felting. The pieces all use Blue faced Leicester fibre. I laid out some dark and some light fibre on the back and felted the pieces. I stopped felting when the pieces where about 20% shrunk , to check them and to add some hand stitching. If you look very closely you can see stitching on the fabrics. After final felting., they were ready for some more hand stitching and some machine stitching. Here the stitching is more visible , with the lovely variation you get , when you combine all the different stitch techniques together. Ready now for the dye bath.

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25/05/2016

Eco Dyeing / jewellery / machine stitching / Mordant / Natural dyeing / Wet felting

Eucalyptus

I have naturally dyed a number of large felt pieces but never tried dying jewellery until this week , it has also been my first experience of dyeing with eucalyptus as I was recently given some leaves. I have made lots of jewellery , mostly brooches , and I intend to dye them in matches in different colours. This time it was the turn of eucalyptus. Here is all the jewellery being made. A lot of circles cut out . Various fabrics stitching and resists added. The collection drying in the sunshine . A choose three to dye on this occasion , adding some cotton and silk machine stitching before dyeing. Looking good but without a lot of difference in the colours between the different fibres so I decided to modified the pieces with iron. The iron really changes the colours. The silk has become a lot more coppery , and the linen…

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24/04/2016

Eco Dyeing / jewellery / Photography / Wet felting

Frustrating week

Everything this week seems to have gone not quite right. Firstly I have finished framed and hung on the wall , nine felt pieces. These pieces originated from a felted jacket that did not fit too well. They are simply framed in wood box frames. I am very pleased with them but unfortunately I can photograph them in situ , due to reflections . Well I can but they don't look so good, Perhaps non reflective glass is the answer , but that's quite a bid deal to change them all. Here is the best I can do. So I have come up with a bit of a cheat. All individually photographed and then added here one by one. On my screen this is a square , not…

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04/03/2016

Eco Dyeing / Natural dyeing / Wet felting

Blackberry pink

Beautiful juicy blackberries growing in all the hedgerows. Good for eating and also good for dyeing. I have to admit I am not a big fan of eating them straight of the plant , but I do like them stewed with some apples. But today I could not waste them by eating them as I wanted to check out the results of using them as an dye. I first made a tiny little wet felted vessel, with six points , which I stupidly did not photograph ! I then did some simple stitching on it with cotton yarn. After soaking for an hour or too, it was plunged straight into the dye pot. Just a few hours later a sweet little pink pointed vessel emerged. I love both its smallness, it's pointedness and its pinkness. Now I have heard that you can freeze blackberries and then dye with them , so…

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01/08/2015

Eco Dyeing / Mordant / Natural dyeing

Stocking up

Over the last few months I have been foraging and collecting and stocking up on materials I can use for dyeing in the future. Whilst walking I have been picking up lichen that has been washed off the trees by the rain and now have a small collection of two varieties. I have still to research what colours these will yield. I found some fallen down tree branches and collected some silver birch bark . I am hoping this will give a beautiful pink colours. Both in the UK and in the Netherlands , I have found is very easy to collect alder cones especially after all the heavy rain we have been having. These can be used as a mordant , or a dye. Only a few months ago I don't think I really knew what these were. ! I harvested some young bracken shoots and some dock leaves , which…

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30/07/2015

British wool fibres / Eco Dyeing / Natural dyeing / Wet felting

Why is small best ?

For the last few months I have been struggling to make large felted vessels using Shetland and BFL fibres. I thought I had tracked down the problem to the resist I was using. It was a slightly improved laminate floor underlay with a green backing full of tiny indentations. My side by side experiments showed that this resist slowed down the felting process and resulted in a bigger final piece. Strange but true as these two vases below show. Identical in all respects the one on the left is made with the green resist and is larger and has poorer quality felt. So armed with what I thought was the solution and a new cheaper slipperier resist I tried again. Worse than ever !! Full of holes. Poor quality felt. Some of this I put down to the Shetland fibre I was using which seems repel water and soap not…

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12/07/2015

Eco Dyeing / machine stitching / Natural dyeing / Textile art / Wet felting

Success

Well after last weeks disappearing yellow dye , I first rushed out to see if there was any hawthorn blossom left. I was in luck as the trees down by the river were still mostly in flower and I was able to easily pick some more. I do wonder if the colour comes from the petals , which are really beautiful , or for the tiny berry in the middle of the flower ? I also had a good look at my pans , and concluded they were not very clean. So I boiled them with washing soda solution which produced a ghastly pink scummy solution. I then scrubbed them with abrasive powder cleaner and finally rinsed and rinsed. In parallel with this I was making another vessel to dye . Trying Shetland fibre again. Looks a little hairy as it still here needs a shave and I am…

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06/06/2015

Eco Dyeing / Natural dyeing / Wet felting

Where has the yellow gone ?

At this time of the year there are a huge numbers of flowers and leaves that can be harvested and used for dyeing. Unfurtunately I did not plan ahead and have not got a collection of felt waiting to be dyed. Shame . Never mind I shall research this year and plan ahead better next year. I did have this sweet little vase , waiting to be dyed . I thought it would look lovely dyed yellow. So out of the multitude of options, I chose hawthorn flowers. Well in truth I didn't so much chose them , but came across them while looking around the local woods with my trusty 'Wild Color' by Jenny Dean, my scissors and my gardening gloves in my rucksack. Always make samples they say! So I did , here they are good shades of yellow , especially on the silk. Well having made my…

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31/05/2015

Eco Dyeing / Natural dyeing / Wet felting

Felting in the garden

It has been the most beautiful weather this week in the Netherlands . So I decided to do some felting in the garden . I always feel freer to use loads of water in the garden where I don't have to worry about mopping up , I also use the hose to rewet my pieces which is really quick and feel that the slats on my wooden garden table help the process. Outside with my neighbours apples tree in full bloom and the sun shining it's hard not to be inspired. I am making a series of vessels to naturally dye. I decided to have a go at making three at once. One Polwarth , silk and merino , one Blue Faced Leicester and one LLewyn and merino. The LLewyn had been in my stash since a Woolfest a number of years ago. It proved to be the problem child…

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26/04/2015