One of the personal projects I am working on at the moment is to make a Pojagi for my bedroom window. For the last year or so we’ve lived with the outside blind shut on our bedroom window, because street lights flood our room and it seems I can only sleep when lights are not shining in my face.

However, I am a lover of light during the day. And I’ve been living like a mole. So the blind is up and the light is coming in. Now a Pojagi does not really prevent much light from entering at all. Which is great! It’s going to be more of a privacy screen, and then at the window edges I’ll use some thicker linen to block the light that creeps around the edges of the indoor blind.

Anyway that is why I have recently been doing some dyeing with Madder roots. For my pojagi I wanted to do some nice subtle pale pinks with some pale greys…well clearly I underestimated my dye strength this time around. In the past I’ve always used a pre-ground powder, so 50g of dye basically dyed next to nothing. This time I went for the roots and chopped them myself.

The nitty gritty for my dye friends out there:

• Soaked whole roots overnight and strained off water (saved*)
• Chopped with scissors a few chunky roots, then chucked it all in a blender with a bit of water. Keep it runny or you blender wont love you.
• Put the resulting madder root milkshake into a big stainless steel cooking pot with some hot tap water and gave it a stir. Immersed my pre-mordanted fabrics and left overnight. (I went and turned my fabric about 3 times before i went to bed)
• On the second day I slowly brought the temp to about 55 degrees. I’m notoriously bad at measuring anything, so it may have been hotter or cooler. I could comfortably hold my hand in there for about 10 seconds.
• Turned off the heat and left overnight, turning the fabric whenever I remembered.
• The third day I checked my colour, and amazingly my PH with my new PH meter. It was sitting somewhere around 7 (it’s been a few days and I never write stuff down!!). I thought it was a bit too orange, so I added about a teaspoon of lime, turned on the heat for about 20 minutes (it didnt get as hot as on day 2), stirred. then left it for a few hours.
• I checked my PH after I took out my cloth and it was sitting at 7.6. So i feel like even with the addition of lime, I didn’t shift the colour too far past what it should be at neutral.

The PH is actually quite interesting to me. I’ve checked my tap water and our regular PH is about 8. It makes me wonder if the madder root itself lowers the PH of the water, or if my water was just a bit off the day I tested it, and normally it does sit closer to neutral. I’m sure I’ll get around to testing it again at some point.

Premordanting:

• Linen and silk / cotton were premordanted with soy.
• Silk organza mordanted with none / alum for a few hours (cold immersion) and alum overnight (cold immersion) alum not measured (few teaspoons?)

*Pre root chopping water – This water is said to be quite orange, which is why it gets tipped off and not used for dyeing. I decided to test this theory, and yep! It is orange. Very orange. If you want to dye orange, use your madder root soak water. I put my unmordanted silk in this, and left it in the sun in a metal pot for a day and night. It was pretty orange. I then added this piece to the main dye pot because I wasn’t a fan, but i cut a sample off first.

I’m planning on doing the grey with logwood, or maybe cutch. Crossing my fingers for not purple.

Exhaust Dyes are below. Left overnight and then brought up to 60 for 20 mins.

This post is a bit late to the party, for which I apologise. It’s always busy busy busy around here, and blogging really ends up taking a back seat to the rest of my work.  In the back of my mind while I’m dyeing I’m writing blog posts about new discoveries, new things, new ideas and then at the end of the day, when I can fit in some screen time – my mind goes blank.  I keep up with my instagram though, it is quite the addictive app, so if you’re on there, do follow me! I do updates there nearly every day. You can give me a click right over there >>>>.

Last month I had the great pleasure of sharing my work, process and studio on the Design Sponge blog. As someone who has this blog delivered every day to my inbox, it was such a thrill to be included there amongst all the other amazingly talented people that they have also covered. I’ve been an avid follower of Grace Bonny and DS for about as long as I’ve been in business, so it’s a bit of a dream come true!

Huge thanks to Maxwell Tielman who wrote the post on me and my work and to Hilary Walker who took some amazing photos!

In my last post I touched briefly on the fact that I’ve picked up a lot of new stockists lately. Which is so totally fabulous and I am so proud to have my work at each and every one of them.

The downside to it though, is I have really been making the same thing quite a bit for the last few months and I really need to call a time out and be newly creative again.  I love my current designs and I don’t think I’ll stop making them anytime soon, but I’d like to add to them. Grow on from them and let them change as I learn new stuff.

I’m a reasonably time poor person, well I think I am. I have a small child who increasingly demands more of my attention and rightly so. My son is 4 and this is his last year at home with me before he starts school. This is our LAST year together where we get to hang out all the time and go to the park, and play and pretend we’re cats, dance and sing along to Taylor Swift (yes I really just admitted that) and just be best friends. Yes these things will carry on as he grows older, but we’ll never live this time again and something I think about increasingly as I get older is “this is it”. I won’t ever get to spend a year with my 4 year old son again.

So, this year I am only going to work, on “work” days. Trust me, this will be challenging. Right now I’m watching Peg + Cat while I write this blog post.  I’m a multi tasker at heart, but I’ve come to recognise that it’s tiring and I just can’t keep doing it if i want to remain sane!

To kick off my more relaxed way of living in 2015, next week I am going on a creative holiday. And I can’t wait! I have so many colours in my head, so many techniques I want to try out, so many product ideas to play with and so much learning and experimenting to do. It’s going to be seriously great. And with me being on holiday, I will hopefully have time to blog more about what I’m up to creatively.

Some of the things I’m hoping to work on are some new home wares, some knitting, naturally dyed colours besides indigo and whatever else I can dream up when I have the mental space to dream of it.

It’s going to be so awesome. Have you ever gone on a creative holiday?

So it’s been a few weeks since I began this story of quilt making.  I feel quite nervous to be talking about these quilts with an audience, having spent so much time working on them, worrying over them and fretting in general.  I wrote the story below earlier in the year, when I was getting ready for Domestic Frontier, where this quilt made it’s debut.

The design of this quilt is inspired by early American quilting and also Native American textiles. My father’s mother immigrated to Australia from America in 1943 and my father and his brothers and sisters will swear up and down that we have Native American Sioux heritage. Looking at old photos of my grandmother it certainly seems possible and I am quite fascinated by this idea and I hope to explore it further in my designs. I am yet to visit the part of America my grandmother came from, but I’ve spent a little time in the states, and it is one of those places I find myself impossibly drawn to. It was in the US that I first realised my love of mountains; after years of tuning out when my father talked endlessly about his mountain climbing days.

The flying geese quilt block is speculated to have been used as code by slaves during the civil war, as a reminder to follow the geese north in the summertime and escape their bondage. Whether this is true or not, the triangle feels to me to be a symbol of both freedom and safety, it is geese with their wings spread, it is mountains reaching for the stars and it is the arrowheads used to hunt food and fend off predators.

I chose to dye this quilt with Indigo and Fustic, because one, they look great together, but also because they ground each other. They are the earth and the sky and in different lights they take turns on being both strong and gentle. A lioness and her cub. I feel like this quilt is a protector, it seems like a kind of armour and I imagine it keeping it’s owner safe and warm.

I do design both a front and a back before I begin the dye work for my quilt, and my favourite moment of this quilt is actually found on the back. Tiny variations flitter like dappled sunlight in the fustic dyed cotton and it makes me think of hot summer days, lying in the shade next to a lake, listening to the sounds of the bush.

This quilt was created over a period of 6 weeks from June 12, 2014 to July 31st 2014. It is the result of 26 hours of designing, dyeing, sewing, ironing, washing, and quilting. It is not perfect, but it is just right.

Happily this quilt has found it’s home. And even more happily it is going to a FAMILY. Just as I imagined it would. It really does bring tears to my eyes to know it will be loved well.

Photos in this post taken by Lillie Thompson.

Today I am speaking all about my love of Indigo on The Planthunter.

You can check out my story here!

A quick reminder as well, I have 2 workshops coming up this month, both held at the Cecilia Fox warehouse. It’s a fabulous space, and I’m really looking forward to sharing my skills knowledge, bad jokes and day with everyone. There are only a few spaces left in each class, so sign up now! It’s possible that I may not find time in schedule to do another workshop before the end of the year, so if you’re holding out for a later date, don’t wait! I’m not sure when the next workshop will be. Click here to book.

I’ve been looking for some time for a wonderful space to run my workshops in. Something large, light filled, and indoors.  Something centrally located near public transport in a vibrant inner city suburb. It is with great pleasure that I share with you that I have found all of this and more in the new Cecilia Fox warehouse in Brunswick.

Mel, the woman behind Cecilia Fox has recently landed herself an AMAZING new warehouse and is welcoming my classes to her new space. Her light filled warehouse is located in Brunswick very close to the Sydney Rd tram (19), and lots of great shops and cafes. It’s a wonderfully open and enormous space, with plenty of room for all the shibori and Indigo you can dream of. ALL of it.

Now I know it doesn’t seem possible that it could get any better, BUT IT DOES.

The super talented Julia Ostro who makes incredible cakes, tarts, donuts, and every other glorious thing you can imagine eating, is going to keep our tummies full with her creations. Each workshop will enjoy one of her seasonally baked creations, along with a fruit platter, and of course tea and coffee.

The class itself covers how to set up an Indigo vat and I demonstrate a few different techniques. After the initial instructional part of the class,  you’ll explore your creative side and I will be available to answer any and all questions as the class progresses. Everyone is supplied with a silk scarf, a tea towel and scrap fabric, so you can try out your chosen technique before creating your pièce de résistance!

Participants are invited to bring in natural cloth or yarn from home to dye in the vat if they’d like to, and further materials are available for purchase during the class.  At the end of the day, you go home with your own Indigo masterpiece, and if you’d like to explore the wonderful world of Indigo further (and frankly, who wouldn’t want to?) you can purchase an indigo kit (coming soon to the shop for workshoppers!) and keep going with all you have learned.

There are 2 class dates available to sign up for in October. The classes run from 10.30 – 3pm and have a maximum of 10 students + 1 assistant position. At this point no further classes are scheduled, however I hope to do more over summer.

If you’re a textile / arts / design student over 18, you can apply to be the assistant by emailing me on vic @ bindandfold.com

See you in class!

Derived from the leaves of the Indigo plant, there are a few different varieties. I use a certified organic Indian Indigo, Indigofera Tinctoria. The Japanese strain of Indigo has the botanical name of Polygonum Tinctorium, and is also known as Dyers Knotweed.  Australia also has it’s own indigenous Indigo, known as Indigofera Australis. It is a rather gorgeous shrub, and has delicate purple flowers in the springtime. For the gardeners out there, it likes a well drained position in half shade.

Working with Indigo requires patience, and persistence. When you dye with Indigo, you are required to re-dip your piece to build up the colour, and leave it to oxidise fully between dips. Repeated dipping also improves it’s wash and light fastness.  All of my work receives at a minimum 3 dips in the Indigo vat. The darker shades are built up over many more dips, and a piece I worked on recently had around 15 dips to reach the desired shade. That patience I mentioned earlier was starting to wear a touch thin by the end of that piece!

Indigo, while tricky to work with, is a great natural dye to begin your journey with. It is a lovely colour, it is challenging, and working with it is extremely satisfying.  If you’d like to learn more about working with Indigo, I do teach one day workshops, which will be starting up again in the springtime. If you’d like to come along and dip your proverbial toe in the vat (not your real toe, it WILL turn blue) then you can drop me a line via my contact page to be notified when classes are available for booking.

Here’s a little taste of the Indigo process, enjoy!

Fustic and Indigo green is The Best. This shade of green makes me slap my face a la Macaulay Caulkin and rather than scream, I kind of just go “eughaaargh” and make other nonsense noises because words just cannot explain how good it is.

Growing up in Australia I’m used to seeing stereotypical images of our bush (that’s Aussie for forest for any international readers), the ones where the ground is brown, the tree is brown, and the leaves are a dull greenish silver, or just army green. It does have it’s beauty and if you’re an art fan, please go look up John Glover. He’ll make you slap your face a la Macaulay as well.

For most of my life I have always found green rather boring, unless it was a beautiful foreign forest green, the kind I have never seen a great deal of living here. So imagine my incredible delight when I thought to myself “perhaps I will try a green” and stumbled upon this loveliness. Since I have it has opened my eyes to it in the Australian landscape too. Now I see it everywhere. It flashes out at me like little emerald gems that were once secreted away because to see them always would tarnish their beauty.

I know I say this about every colour, but I think it’s my favourite. It is however a harder colour to achieve. Well, it’s not really hard per say, it’s just that it takes longer to achieve, because you have to dye your textile twice. In the world of natural dyes that means in whatever order you choose to work, you effectively dye your work three times, because fustic requires a mordant first. If you want to do it on cotton, it means 3 mordants and 2 dye jobs! That is just crazy, what kind of lunatic would spend that much time dyeing something?

Me.

I have never been a yellow person. It is just NOT my colour. If I try to wear something yellow, I look hideously ill, it’s terribly unbecoming. That was however, until I discovered Fustic.

My experience with fustic has given me astoundingly beautiful mustard tones of yellow, which deepen in shade quite quickly depending on the amount of dye used. It’s a very economical dye, a little goes a long way. It is another dye I enjoy the smell of, it’s hard to describe, but the word that springs to mind first is sticky. Which is fitting, because it does create a rather sticky goo when you first add water to it. So it has a sticky tannin smell. Maybe a bit like old dried cow dung? That sounds unpleasant and I’m sure my husband thinks it reeks horribly, but once again I do not. The smell of cows and dirt and grass and trees with a hint of woodsmoke? Maybe none, or all of those things! I shall leave that up to you to decide if you try dyeing with it.

Fustic works well on all the fibres I have tried. It gives a brighter yellow on alpaca, a bright chartreuse I would call it, and a mustard on merino.  It also gives a mustard on cotton, and like all natural dyes, changes depending on the light. Fustic has that lovely glow that all natural dyes in my experience have. Synthetic dyes just can’t beat it.

Fustic has good to excellent wash and light fastness on protein fibres, and seems to be doing well on my cotton too.

Last, but not least, when you marry fustic to indigo, you get a beautiful green offspring that is so green, even pine trees get jealous. I’ll be blogging that love story soon.

I have always found the colour red to be immensely appealing.  It’s bright, yet dark, it glows, but can be sombre. It’s the colour of love, blood, danger, the desert and fire engines. It means different things and triggers different emotional responses depending on the context in which it is used.

Possibly the loveliest part of dyeing with madder, is the smell of it. It has a rich earthy sweet smell, and it just smells red!  Standing at the stove, checking my dye, breathing in the sweet earthy aroma makes me feel really connected to what I am working on. It conjures up a sense of well being and warmth, contentment and pleasure.

If I was a religious person I would say it feels like a prayer. Standing at the stove, feeling the heat, breathing in the dye’s scent, it centres me and makes me calm. I imagine it’s how a chef feels when they are concocting a culinary masterpiece, and all the flavours come together just so, and they can smell it, and they know the joy of what they’re making before it is done.

Madder is a traditional dye plant and it’s use has been dated as far back as 2000 BC.  The dye is present in the root of the plant, and is cultivated in 3 year intervals. I would love to grow my own madder for use, but the 3 year wait to then harvest has dissuaded me so far.

All my experiments with Madder root have been on merino and alpaca yarns. I would like to attempt a Turkey Red on cotton one day, but the length of time and investment involved in using it with a plant based fibre is daunting to say the least. I will do it eventually, even if just to say that I have.

Madder root is quite a weak dye and requires a lot of it for depth of shade. It can make for a bit of a thrilling dye experience because then if you screw up, you know you might as well have set some money on fire instead! The upside however when it works out is you get a brilliant deep red, and you can then use the dye bath again and again to achieve lighter shades. The lighter corals, peaches and pinks are quite lovely, and are just as colourfast.  They remind me of the roses that grow in the front yards around Moreland at the end of summer.

Madder is considered to be very light and washfast, and can be good to use as a control sample when testing other dyes for the same. The most important technical thing to remember when you dye with Madder Root is to not let it get too hot, or your colour will not be as pleasantly vibrant.

Enjoy your dyeing with Madder! Don’t forget to take a moment to relax, breathe it in, and let it’s earthy wonderfulness wash over you.

Merino throws dyed with Madder available in the shop!