As a ‘run through’ for the first Natural Dyeing workshop I will be teaching at The Bothy in Cirencester on Saturday August 12th, I extended an invitation to students who had been on one of my weaving courses, to come and spend a day making and using dyes extracted from natural sources.

Dye was extracted from dried dyestuffs including madder (reds/oranges/pinks) and Logwood (purples/greys/browns) and from a diverse range of seasonal fresh plants including Weld (yellows), asparagus leaves (pale green) and white Achillea (blue/grey), plus as many more as we had jars to try! Wool samples pre-prepared with mordant were dyed and some over-dyed in a second colour producing a subtle two-toned yarn.

My plan for the students to dye a 30g skein of wool in their favourite dye(s) fell by the wayside as they wanted to keep extracting colour from new plants, so they took this mordanted wool home.

Within a couple of days I started receiving emails with photos of the plants they had tried and the fabulous (and sometimes unexpected) colours they had dyed their wool.

I’ve set up the portable loom for my demonstration this weekend at Stow Cotswold Festival on Saturday 15th July. I will be in St Edward’s Hall and I would love you to drop by! There will be a couple of little looms for anyone to try weaving.