Ruth Singer

Category: textiles

  • Community sustainable textiles project

    Community sustainable textiles project

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    Ruth Singer
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    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…

  • Postcard from Chateau Dumas 1

    Postcard from Chateau Dumas 1

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    Ruth Singer
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    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.…

  • Natural Dye: local plant bundles

    Natural Dye: local plant bundles

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    Ruth Singer
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    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…

  • Petal Dye

    Petal Dye

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    Ruth Singer
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    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…

  • Natural Dye : Hypericum / St John’s Wort

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    Ruth Singer
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    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…

  • 2014 textiles workshops

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    Ruth Singer
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    Just a brief outline of the new workshops to come in 2014, full details soon! Workshops 2014 All workshops are 10am-4pm on Saturdays at Ruth Singer Studio, Leicester. £55 each or book 3 for £150 Miniature Art Quilts. 25th January Shadow Embroidery. 23rd February Cut-surface quilting. 22nd March Family Stories. 26th April Handmade fabrics. 31st…

  • Natural Dye :: Buddleia

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    Ruth Singer
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    I’m delighted by this one. Buddleia or Butterfly bush, grows pretty much all over the place here. Living in a city, there’s lots of wasteland around, particularly on my walk into town, where this stuff loves to grow. All over the canal tow path, around the parks and in scraps of land. I personally love…

  • Natural Dye :: Comfrey

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    Ruth Singer
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    On holiday I picked masses of comfrey, growing abundantly on the canal bank in Staffordshire. I brewed it up in the enamel pan again and the initial colour looked very promising. I left a scrap of silk organza in the dye pot while it was brewing and it came out a bright, olive green –…

  • Natural Dye : Avocado

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    Ruth Singer
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    After about 15 years break, I’ve come back to experimenting with natural dyes.  I am not sure what took me so long. I suppose my old studio wasn’t set up for wet work, and for many years I lived with other people who would not appreciate messy dyestuff in their kitchens. For the last few…