Natural Dye Experiments With Textile Artist Rosemary Riedel-O'Brien

This week we have been working with incredible hand weaver Rose Reidel-O’Brien to explore the potential of natural dyes that we can forage from the Devon hedgerows. We went out with our foraging basket and found many things to experiment with. Oak leaves, Copper Beech leaves, Alder cones & Sloes. These produced a beautiful array of browns, yellows, green and purple. Our aim is to produce work rooted in the locality that we live on, deeply summoning the seasonal colours from our landscape. There is something so intrinsically human, something rattling deep in the marrow that speaks when using these foraged dye plants. The process of walking the well trodden bridleways of the moors, picking from the homely crab apple tree, training the eye to become hawk like – tuning in to an instinctive knowledge pool that knows what may produce a colour once steeped in a boiling vat. This paired with using the local Dartmoor white face sheep’s fleece, hand spun is a kind of alchemy unfolding. Spinning the beauty of the landscape all around us and yarn painting the colours that flow so abundantly.

Dye pots ready to boil

We foraged for oak leaves and copper beech leaves to experiment with what colours they may produce. Into the vat will go local Dartmoor Whiteface yarn.

Solar Dye Jar

We experimented with creating a solar dye jar. We put in cold water, sloe berries just cracked by first frost and a bundle of Dartmoor Whiteface roving. We have set this to percolate in the greenhouse, we hope that the exposure to the sun will create a colour in the jar over a period of weeks and months.

foraging for alder cones

The whole family came to forage fallen alder cones, these produce a lovely brown hue that works so well when dying wool. The cones when at the stage of dropping become very dark brown and almost sticky with the amount of pigment that they store.

This ongoing exploration will be documented and compiled into a publication so that we my share this joyous adventure into the colours of Dartmoor far and wide.