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Welcome to the second episode of the Summer Series! Today we’re chatting about the beautiful things that Mette loves to make for her country house, especially her recent tea towel project. Mette will be teaching a workshop on Natural Dyeing at our next Curious Handmade Country House Retreat. It’s such a fascinating subject that I thought all of my listeners (and not just the lucky retreaters!) would love to learn more, so I invited her to tell us a little bit about her methods.
Show Sponsors:
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Curious Handmade Country House Retreat
Oct 20 – 23 // Cumbria, UK
There are still a couple of twin share places available for the Autumn Country House retreat. If you are interested in finding out more you can email me – helen@curioushandmade.com
Show Photos:
The famous tea towel:
Some detail from Mette’s dyeing notebook:
Privet:
Hibiscus:
Logwood:
The magic Privet hedge:
The collection of naturally dyed silk scarves.
The flower petal fabric:
Show Links:
The natural dyeing books I mention in this episode are:
A Heritage of Colour by Jenny Dean
The Modern Natural Dyer by Kristine Vejar
Kristine’s website: A Verb for Keeping Warm
If you won’t manage to make it to the retreat or would like to get started with natural dyeing ahead of Mette’s hands-on workshop, check out Kristine’s great two part class at Creative Bug:
Learn the basics of natural dyeing in this two-part course, enabling you to create fabrics and garments in your very own original hues. Kristine uses all natural dyes in her process, and she discusses how to create a variety of shades by using different dyes, fabrics and dye bath times. In the first part of this class, you will learn how to work with silk, a protein fiber, dyeing it a lovely purple shade with Logwood. In the second part, you will learn how to work with cellulose fibers, dyeing a pair of cotton socks red using Madder extract.
An ebook about natural dying that will appeal to everyone, but with special interest to vegans:
Botanical Colour at Your Fingertips Rebecca Desnos
That’s all for this week of The Summer Series! Happy knitting!
