Overdyeing with natural dyes and an 18 year old gift.

Many years ago I was gifted a little packed of orange wood shavings, at the time I didn’t do much natural dyeing, and so this went into a box and I completely forgot about it, yesterday which

is around 15 - 20 years later and was pottering around my studio, and found it in a little box. I was a bit dubious if the colour would perform since I assumed maybe the pigments would break down, but turns out they were just fine! I think this is Brazil wood.

I dyed a base on some of the skeins of Cotinus (smoke bush) it gives a really beautiful smoky undertone, not too strong as to overpower anything on top but it just adds a lovely depth of colour. I also over dyed some of them in indigo to get some greens, I just kept adding skeins until the orange was exhausted. I also shifted the orange to pink with soda ash.

All in all a really pretty palette was achieved and I will use them to embroider the fabric I printed with Iron and tannin underneath.

The yarns are Silk and Silk and Bluefaced Leicester embroidery skeins from Chester Wool Co, in the US you can purchase these from Wool2dye4.