Natural fabric dyeing

Whilst visiting Enonkoski in Finland I couldn’t resist dyeing some cotton and wool with stuffs from the forest. I decided on lichen, heather and fern. I didn’t have all the mordants I needed so there was a lot of winging it happening.

The results were soft pale colours the most surpirising being the fern which had a strong burgundy liquid. The lichen is my favourite which took to the wool very nicely and on more research I descovered that you can dye with lichen without a mordant on wool, so that’s probably why. I left the stuffs in the buckets over night before boiling them and even left them for another night containing the fabric that I had treated with bicarbonate of soda.

I was was on the whole happy with the results although leaving the cotton in the buckets without stirring did make the fabric a little patchy.