Wet felting

Suddenly the weather in the North East of England has got sunny and reasonably warm. Of course, it is not forecast to last long! One of the challenges of making naturally dyed felt art is to keep sufficient stock of your natural dye materials. So while the sun is shining and the sap is rising I need to get out and harvest supplies of natural dye materials to store for the rest of the year. Nettles Abundantly available and easy to pick with some sharp scissors and some good gardening gloves. I am now drying my harvest, to use later.  I have not dried nettles before so it will be interesting to see how the colour is affected by the drying process. Dock One of my favourites. as it dyes silk such a wonderful olive colour.     I have used dock successfully as a dried natural dye material and so out…

My first felt pictures with my new natural dye method are based on the tun house at the Peak Alum works in Ravenscar, UK. Really I should say based on the remains of the tun house. Today this is all you can see. Helpfully a drawing by the National trust gives an idea of what the tun house would have looked like in the 17th century. I choose this place because it is beautiful and today is quiet and peaceful,.  Once the Alum it produced was an essential component of the natural dyeing process and it would have been smelly and dirty.  it a good example of the ability of the earth to recover.   A like the idea of exploited land recovering and also of this natural dyeing chemistry link across the years. I choose this place because today it is beautiful and quiet and peaceful.  Once the Alum it produced…

When I first got into natural dyeing of felt, I wanted to make all white pieces and then dye them as a whole.  Doing this was unique and special as all the different fibres were subtle shade variations.  This process was great and taught me a lot about natural dyeing, but I towards the end of last year I was becoming frustrated with the end results of my l technique. I thought maybe I needed a new natural dyeing technique. Why did I need a new natural dyeing technique? My make it white,  then dye the finished pieces,  made beautiful pieces but they contained only a limited range of colours. This is perfectly obvious as they had all only seen the same dye bath. Special though it was I felt that the pieces were a bit boring as there was not much light and shade or colour variation. I was also frustrated…