Living in a small mountain village just outside of Tokyo, I grow a crop of indigo every year and process the leaves into dye using traditional methods. I also breed silk moths, raise the silkworms and then reel/spin the silk from the cocoons. The silk is then dyed with natural dyes and finally woven on traditional Japanese looms. I run several ten-day live-in workshops a year at the old farmhouse here in Japan focusing on the Japanese use of indigo. Contact me for information.
Wednesday 16 November 2011
Harlequin Glorybower Dyer Season Again
In early November the local mountains and cliffs supply Harlequin Glorybower berries that dye a Korean pine-ash glaze porcelain color with an aluminum mordant. With some watered-down gardenia pod dye-bath you can under-dye to get some fresh greens. A too vivid yellow gets you a truly obnoxious Exorcist barf fluorescent green.
The berries are best when they are dark blue and almost black but still juicy. Use a blender to pulverize them and then bring them to an almost boil. Stop before it bubbles to get a fresh color. It is tempting to use more mordant when dying with unstable berry dyes. The thread can get sticky with mordant when using this dye so go easy on it.
I wrote about Kusagi dying on my MONDAY, 12 OCTOBER, 2009 post if you would like to read it.
The truly obnoxious Exorcist barf fluorescent green - the way you phrase things!
ReplyDeleteI love learning from your blog posts, and reading about your life. Thanks as always!
exorcist barf green could work sometimes :)
ReplyDeleteFascinating, it looks like witchery.
ReplyDelete