January weather was amazing & we spent time most of our days just hanging out & going to the beach to swim which was superb & is really all I ever want to do in summer anyway.

By the time February arrived I was well rested & ready to do some explorations into using NZ native plants for dyeing fabric & fibre.

The harakeke seed pods were at their best for harvesting for making a dye bath too & I was lucky enough to have my friend, Isla, walk me thru the process, which is very easy but it is a process which takes a few days.
Here's a link to a post on Isla's website which outlines the process we used; natural-dyeing-with-harakeke-seed-pods

In the dye bath I made from the pods I had harvested I dyed a few lengths of muka, 3xDMC cotton embroidery threads of various thickness, a 60cm square of calico, a 30cm square of cotton drill & various sized rectangles of cotton drill fabric I had cut out with a view to sewing a purl soho boxy tee.

It seems the harakeke pods are high in tannins so no surprise with the colours the cottons & cotton fabrics came out but it was lovely to see the variation in the colours of the muka fibres.

Rather than dyeing a single large piece of fabric which would have been awkward to fit in my dye pot, I pre-cut the pieces of fabric for my sewing.

What I hadn't considered was the extra shrinkage of the fabric courtesy of simmering for an hour in hot water.
I had already washed & dried the fabric BUT I do cold washes & line dry ! What a bastard trap for rookies !

I sewed up my top anyway & fortunately the pattern makes a generous size garment so the only problem area is the armhole depth which is a little too tight to be comfortable.
But I have a plan !
I think I'll open that seam, on each side, & insert a gusset just to give me a bit more space.

And now, finally, we get to the point of why I wanted to sew this particular top.
It's all about the bottom panel. Which is a separate piece.
A beautifully proportioned rectangle of fabric which lends itself to embellishment.
I was watching Sashiko Stitching taught by Lisa Solomon on Creativebug & in one part of the class she is wearing a top she has made with a sashiko embroidered bottom.

I had the fabric : I had the threads : I had the pattern I wanted to embroider & now I have a top which is the memory piece of my very 1st foray into dyeing with harakeke seed pods.

Well let's just say I'm not giving up hope of ever being successful at 'eco bundle dyeing' on silk, however, I won't be rushing out & buying more silk !   

I made a dye bath out some raurekau bark I had in the freezer. I found in the past the this bark will often yield a lot of colour so I made it fairly weak.
I wrapped up the silk again, with a few different leaves & seeds inside & used the same method as I did with my 1st attempt. 

I got beautiful yellow kowhai seeds prints & a couple of lovely subtle leaf prints, so I cut this section off.
Alas, again virtually no colour on the fabric.

Spurred on by the success of the ferns I wrapped some into the remainder of the cloth, wrapped it up again, tied it with string & popped it in the dye bath again. 

This time I got beautiful fern prints & lovely relief pattern from the string but again didn't get colour right to the centre.

So that's it, my experiment with silk & bundle dyeing is over.
Next adventure with plant dyes will be an immersion bath.

Recently I went to an 'Eco Dyeing' one day workshop which was held as part of a Creative Fibre Group weekend retreat.

We each purchased a silk habotai scarf approx 40cm wide by 1.8m long from the tutor & went thru the steps as directed.
My process went like this:

• wetting the silk,
• laying down some dried eucalyptus leaves
• covering with gladwrap to isolate the cloth from most of the dye in the bath (this is apparently for 'clarity')
• wrapping the cloth tightly around a central core (mine was a plastic covered piece of tightly rolled newspaper)
• wrapping the bundle tightly with string & securing it
• boiling it in a dye bath of eucalyptus bark in a large aluminium jam pan for 1&1/2 hours
• removing it from pot
• letting it cool
• unwrapping & being completely surprised to discover that while everyone else had unbundled excitement & joy in the form of colour & imprints all over their fabric, mine had only worked at one end for a distance of approx 40cm where I had laid down some silver dollar leaves. The remainder of my fabric was virtually colourless & had only the faintest imprint of some of the leaves.

My 1st reaction was WTF followed closely by I wonder WHY ?

Here's what I think happened.
I rolled too tightly, wrapped too tightly & my bundle remained perched on the top of everyone else's as it was too long to fit in the pot & couldn't be submerged.
I think this has to be true, because otherwise the dye bath would have at least dyed the fabric even if no pigment came from the leaves bundled within.

All of which, rather than devastating me, actually puzzles me.
Am I the only one in the world that this has happened too ?
Anyway at least it has given me the opportunity to experiment.

I considered just having a go at reproducing the workshop but that would mean I actually need to go find some eucalyptus bark & leaves which, of course, is not actually what I want to do because the whole point of my botanical dyeing experiments is to use what I have available TO ME RIGHT HERE AT MY FEET, so to speak.

So I've cut the successful end off the silk & will gather some leaves & berries from around home, make a dye bath from raurēkau bark, rewrap my silk & see how it goes.

It is possible that I will fail a 2nd time . . . .