I kind of tricked myself into sewing this skirt.
“Just cut it out“, I told myself one sunny morning.
“The toddler’s playing nicely, the music’s good on the radio … just sew the pockets“, I gently suggested.
“It seems to be coming together quickly. There’s still an hour till lunchtime, how about just going until then?“, I whispered.
And, before I knew it – it was done.
The test dyeing happened in dribs and drabs. Mostly while I cooked the dinner over a couple of nights.
Having never really experimented with natural dyes before, I was a little surprised by some of the results.
Excuse the blotchiness – I was pretty gung-ho, bunging everything into pots willy-nilly. Halved onions, chopped leaves and a handful of tea leaves. More Macbeth than Nigella Lawson.
It was terribly fun though. And, aside from feeling like I was playing one of those puzzles where you slide the pieces in the square to make a picture, as I jostled to get the right sized pot onto the right sized element while simultaneously trying to cook the dinner, a vision of starting a business hand-dyeing beautiful skeins of yarn on my stovetop tantalisingly flashed before my eyes …
My favourites are definitely tea, red cabbage and white onion. Beetroot was a total disaster – red? The stains on my clothes from beetroot aren’t nearly so brown …
Red onion took me completely by surprise and red cabbage has dried much bluer than the glorious purple shade it took on in the pot.
The Myrtle kids are voting for red cabbage and Mr Myrtle prefers red onion, but I’m not sure. I’ve got some lovely blue yarn for my top and I’m veering towards white onion or tea … Have you got a favourite?
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