Beautiful blues with Japanese indigo

I’ve spent a weekend immersed in Japanese indigo dyeing. Picking and stripping leaves, fresh dyeing silk wool, hemp silk in a cold bath and then using the used pulp and dye bath to make a more conventional vat for wool. I’ve updated the page on growing and dyeing with Japanese indigo with new instructions and pictures so please have a look.

squeezing

silk starting green

turning blue

jade green and sky blue on wool

beautiful colours on silk and wool

So many colours from sky blue wool, turquoise silk, jade green and a soft muted blue on wool gauze. I have also bundled some leaves in silk and hemp silk and waiting for the indigo to be released. I had such a lovely result last year and I hoping for a repeat performance.

bundles

last years experiment

Persicaria leaf print on silk

This is such a great dye plant and for those of you who I gave a plant this year. Hold back from harvesting. Let your plant flower which should be very soon and set seed and you too should have a good harvest from more plants next year.

I plan to run a weekend indigo workshop next year around the middle of August in time for the first harvest. The plan is to harvest my indigo and make different baths using fresh indigo and  perhaps, some different fermentation vats. Let me know if you are interested

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Planting Indigo

Yesterday, I planted out my Persicaria tinctoria seedlings in the ground. Unsettled weather is forecast, which will, hopefully, reduce the need for endless trips with watering cans.

Last year I grew most of my Persicaria in pots for convenience. The plants that grew in the ground, however, were bushier and seemed to produce more indigo and so this year I decided to plant the majority in the vegetable patch. Following Rowland Ricketts method of planting, I put groups of seedlings deep in the earth up to their necks. Persicaria is a noded plant and will root from the nodes on the stem so burying them helps the plant put down more roots. Also harsh sunlight when the plants are young could kill them. They are hungry and thirsty plants and so you have keep an eye on them in warm weather and don’t let them wilt.

It is hard to believe that in six weeks they will be ready to give up their first harvest of magical blue. I sent my students from Botanical Alchemy off with some seedlings to grow in pots and to get seed for next year. Hopefully there will soon be many more growers of this wonderful plant. I would love to think that something along the lines of Rowland’s IndiGrowing blue community indigo vat could be possible here.

 

Oxfordshire Artsweek

I have been really busy for the past month neglecting both my blog and the housework. My summer studio is up in the garden with printing tables and indoor washing lines for the Spring showers.

A trip to London to see the final dress rehearsal of The Winters Tale at the Opera House with fabrics and clothes from Denny Andrews followed by a wonderful exhibition of Boro textiles at Somerset House.

My indigo has been sown and is growing happily ready to be planted out at the end of May along with Coreopsis and Weld.

Spring leaves have been steamed in handwoven khadi cotton and prints and last years indigo vat has been revived for some mud resist printing.

I was invited by my friend and Potter Noriko McFarlane to show at her studio at Manor Farm in Stanford in the Vale for Oxfordshire Artsweek. The exhibition opened last Saturday with a stream of people coming through the door and is open until the 11th of May.

Now to prepare for the workshops and new work.