Category: natural dye
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Nature connection and colour
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Exploring green in the garden During my first nature-based residency in 2023, I read that humans can see more variations of green than of any other colour. That’s because we evolved to live in green places, needing to identify plants and food. I developed a lovely activity to explore this, using threads in many shades…
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Stitching The Garden
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Nature-inspired embroidery workshop in Mill Field Forest Garden on 8th August I keep saying I am going to stop running workshops but I can’t resist one more in the wonderful community garden I help to run. I was artist in residence here 2024-2025 and I still find it endlessly inspiring and I want to share…
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Surface Pattern exhibition at Unit Twelve
I’m exhibiting my Criminal Quilts: Patchwork in Unit Twelve’s (Surface) Pattern exhibition from 27th April – 26th August.
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Art Textiles course at West Dean College
Ruth Singer is teaching Art Textiles: making cloth with meaning at West Dean College 30th May – 2nd June 2016.
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Narrative Threads Masterclass January 2016
Alongside my Narrative Threads exhibition at the National Centre for Craft & Design, I am running a weekend masterclass on 9th & 10th January 2016 (rescheduled from December). Spend the weekend immersed in creative, slow, experimental techniques inspired by my work. The workshops include simple, experimental natural dye techniques, embroidery and using found objects. You can create a…
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Community sustainable textiles project
I recently completed a short project for Sustainable Harborough using natural dyes and local plants to create a textile wall hanging for the local library. They asked me to propose a workshop for a town centre activity day which local people could join in with and result in something attractive and informative for display at…
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Postcard from Chateau Dumas 1
I’m not long back from a glorious week teaching at Chateau Dumas. It is as wonderful as it looks. I’ve never had such a luxurious teaching experience! The Art of Textiles course covered masses of creative techniques over the course of 6 days and we started with my experimental and freestyle approach to natural dyes.…
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Natural Dye: local plant bundles
After a year or so of experimenting with natural dyes, I’ve had plenty of disappointments alongside a lot of happy accidents, although very few ‘turned out just how I planned’. I am not a precise, measuring, recording, repeating kind of dyer. I read a lot about dyes and then I experiment, break the rules, mess…
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Petal Dye
Dyeing fabric with petals (and some leaves) has to be one of the easiest and most satisfying way of putting natural colour onto cloth. It is ridiculously simple & effective, particularly on silk. I first tried it last year, after reading about it online, seeing what Hannah Lamb was doing with plant bundle (and in India…
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Natural Dye : Hypericum / St John’s Wort
One of the holy grail natural dyes seems to be St John’s Wort, capable of producing reds, pinks, yellows and greens from the same flowers. Investigating this, I deduce that this ideal plant is Hypericum Perforatum, which is a small plant, quite distinct from the hypericum shrubs that appear to be beloved of municipal planting…