As spring dawns on us in the northern hemisphere, my textile practice pivots towards natural dyeing. Something about lighter and warmer days makes me want to connect with the land and plants and get some dye pots on the go! In the winter I always feel less inclined towards dyeing, I already have a hard enough time getting my never ending washing pile dry let alone extra fabrics and yarns. I tend to use the longer spring and summer days to build up a stash of naturally dyed fabric and yarn to then use throughout the long winter months.
I was taking an impromptu walk the other day at a local woodland and to my delight I discovered the paths were lined with gorse, absolutely dripping in flowers. I’d not dyed with gorse before, but it was on my ‘want to try’ list so this seemed the perfect opportunity. Not planning to collect anything I hadn’t brought a bag with me, I just picked as much as I could fit in my pocket. No instagram worthy pictures of foraging baskets here I’m afraid!
Gorse has the most vibrant yellow flowers, so I was quite excited to see what colour could be extracted. A few tips for collecting gorse:
Wear gloves - Gorse has lots of prickles and spikes, ouch!
If you don’t have any gloves on you, like me, I used a sort of scooping motion to avoid getting spiked too much! I’d put my hand gently around the flowers then pull up and away so that my hand was working in the same direction as the spikes, minimising their damage.
Take a few flowers from each bush, rather than stripping one completely. A common foraging rule, keeps the plants happy!
Be careful of bees, there were quite a few buzzing around!
When deciding on how to dye with my foraged flowers, I referred to my favourite natural dyeing book, Wild Colour by Jenny Dean. I also found a blog post of her’s useful for comparisons in colour between ratios of fabric to dye stuff. I had only managed to collect about 20 grams of flowers, so I opted to use the same weight of fabric and yarn, a 100% ratio. Because of this I set my expectations for vibrant colours fairly low, as it seems like 200% is the desired ratio for achieving bright colours.
I simmered the flowers for about an hour, before adding in the fabric. My fabric and yarn had been pre-mordanted in Alum. Normally I would strain our the flowers, then add the fabric to avoid any marks from the flowers getting on the fabric and create a more even dye. But I was in a bit of a rush, so I took a chance and just added them in together. This gamble paid off and the fabric came out fairly even! I let the fabric sit in the dye pot for a couple of hours, making sure to stir and move it around regularly. I’d read that the flowers produce a coconut-like smell when in the dye pot. While they did have a slight aroma to them, I didn’t get a strong coconut smell, but this may be to the small amount of flowers that I used.
I was blown away by the brightness of the yellow’s that came out! Especially on the wool, it gave a gorgeous vibrant yellow. The cotton is more of a soft buttery yellow, which is equally as gorgeous. I wasn’t sure about the lightfastness of this vibrant yellow, but I’m pleased to say that after sitting in my conservatory for a couple of weeks, it is still as zingy as ever!
Last week, I read a wonderful post from Ania at Kaliko Journal on Plant Dyes and our expectations on them. I highly recommend reading the whole post (linked below), but one section that really stood out to me was an analogy of plant dyes being like wines. You may not be able to replicate a colour, each seasons plants can bring a slightly different shade depending on their growth, the weather and all of those variables. That is ok, we should celebrate these differences in shades achieved and the way they age. The evolving nature of natural dyes gives them a magic and depth not founding synthetic dyes. Like a good wine maturing with age, or changing year on year, so will these dyes. So here’s to Spring 2023 Gorse!
Do you use natural dyes? If so, what’s in your dye pot at the moment? I’d love to hear!
Gorse blossom on the bush does really smell like coconut, especially in heat. I remember walking one high summer across fields and moorland and I was convinced that there must be somebody else walking, just a short while ahead of us wearing suntan lotion. I didn’t realise that actually, it was the gorse bushes that I could smell!