To celebrate spring, and new life, and flowers bursting forth from their winter resting places…. a simple color wheel made with foraged petals and plants from the neighborhood.

Our little heat wave this week sent lots of spring flower petals to the ground as it was simply too hot for their delicate beauty. This made foraging a wee bit easier.

A neat follow-up activity? Place another thick drawing paper on top and use a rock to draw out the beautiful plant colors/dyes. Fascinating!

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The neat thing about homeschooling is that you can run with it. Out of the blue (I think, though I’m sure I’m not seeing the whole picture yet) my daughter wanted to know about totem poles. Where are they? What are they? How do they make them? Now she’s 5 so we mostly did a hands-on exploration. And some really excellent library books with pictures of Native Canadians out in the Queen Charlotte Islands and Victoria Island carving giant ones. For months and months at a time. With hand tools. It was a great way to have some conversations about Native Canadian cultures.

(above – gorgeous night photo at Stanley Park, Vancouver, via Flickr here)

We learned that there are different layers of wood in a tree, and that the trees used for totem poles are so huge that even when the outer layers of wood are stripped away to reveal the beautiful, smooth and strong heart wood… the circumference of the totem pole is still enormous.

I guess when you’re 5, it makes absolutely perfect sense to honour animals. And to see them as connected to us. And to make art about your family and what is important to you. I wonder when that disconnect with nature happens and why it does so frequently. So she used toilet paper rolls covered in construction paper to build her own paper totem pole. Making sure to show the animals on the back and sides of the pole tool.

And then she sat on one still-nearly-hot fall day and carved her own little totem pole. In the sunshine. With some shish-kebab sticks and the end of the metal letter-opener, which proved to be the best tool of all. Well, that and her giant 5 year old heart & loving energy.

Wishing you a wonderful weekend. And if you feel inspired, please join our brooch swap. Thank you to everyone who has signed up so far!

Linking up today with Natural Suburbia’s Creative Friday here.

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The elderberry bushes around Ottawa were in stunning, full bloom a week or two ago. So we gathered some heavy, berry-laden branches and set about making a dye bath from their lovely purple gems.

We put them in a huge pot with lots of water, and slowly cooked them for many hours.

This is some of the lovely purple dye “wine” we ended up with.

Meanwhile, we slowly heated some alum powder with water in another dye pot, and soaked / gently cooked some cotton strips and a square Waldorf playsilk.

Here we ended up putting the fibres directly into our plant-filled dye bath.

And this is what we ended up with – lovely, rich purples.

The cotton strips are shown in the front (and are still a little wet).

It’s so interesting how the different fibres take on the color differently – I only wonder how rich the purple would have been if I’d used some wool roving. Luckily I’ve stashed a big bag of elderberries in our freezer for some purple dyeing this winter.

And here are some cotton strips (on the left) dyed with iron mordant and the elderberry dye bath. We were not too impressed with the color and preferred the alum for this particular dyeing process. Iron is said to often darken the colors but here it didn’t go as planned. Perhaps our iron mordant – the particular plant – who knows?

I guess that’s all part of the beauty of natural dyeing – you just never know what you’re going to get.

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One of the things that I’ve learned most clearly in the last few years is that most of life, especially the beautiful and meaningful stuff, is caught up in subtlety. Its quiet, almost peeking presence needs an extra special second glance, or careful listen, or softer touch.

When I put my anxiety and fear aside for my son and listened quietl, and looked carefully, I knew inside he had serious allergies that needed attention. Within the span of 72 hours I had him seen, referred and tested. And now I know for sure. I had to de-noise what was going on around me in order to do that, and I hope I can continue to harness that energy and focus in the future.

When we visited Mud Lake (a sweet respite, an undisturbed piece of nature in this ruckus city) I spent a little extra time noticing all of the subtle details that were largely hidden. That could be missed in one sweeping glance or walk spent thinking of other things.

And it reminded me of how nature and our own health are so interconnected. Noticing my older daughter’s skin color on her face, her eating habits, they tell me about her growth, her exhaustion, how the rhythm of the next day should be. Waldorf teachings resonate clearly on these points, and I am learning more about this every day (well, whenever I carve the time to read). Natural healing is subtle and powerful simultaneously. Just like the juiciest, most wonderful parts of life.

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“Each spice has a special day to it. For turmeric it is Sunday, when light drips fat and butter-colored into the bins to be soaked up glowing, when you pray to the nine planets for love and luck.” from Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, The Mistress of Spices

(photo, above, via Flickr)

These days, we are finding ourselves eating lots of turmeric as I prepare more Indian-inspired meals than ever before. In the hot summer, we are tending to fight the heat with spice and it feels cooling and refreshing, even for the little guy who seems to really enjoy his Indian curried lamb too.

Glowing yellow seemed just right for playsilks and shibori cotton dyeing too.

Here’s how we did it. The following is our how-to for dyeing cotton – the colors and method would probably be different for other fabrics, and particularly animal fibres.

We used a piece of cotton voile (a 20″ square to allow for a 16″ or 18″ pillow sham) that we had previously soaked in our alum-water mordant (see here for more info about that). We layed this cotton flat on our counter.

Then we folded it into thirds.

Then we started to fold it into triangles, one on top of the other.

Until we ended up with one (well-folded) triangle.

Next we used 4 elastics and 4 popsicle sticks to tie the triangle together.

You can position the popsicle sticks in many different ways, for different (geometric) effects. Once you have them placed where you want them, attach each end securely with an elastic band.

Meanwhile we prepared our turmeric dye bath – using one of our special “dye-only” pots with water and turmeric spice, at least a few teaspoons.

Then we slipped our tied-up triangle right into the dye bath, and turned the stove onto medium heat, at first, and then low heat for about an hour.

After a thorough cold water rinse in the sink, the triangle was ready to unfold.

We look forward to trying more shibori natural dyeing, especially with walnuts from our neighbor’s tree this fall, and madder root. It was a richly rewarding experience, and I can only imagine how wonderfully exciting to unfold the dyed triangle in the eyes of a five year-old.

I will be back here soon to share an iron mordant DIY and this year’s crop of hand-dyed cotton color swatches (then I’ll get to last year’s – I guess I’m trying to catch up and going backwards). Have a great Monday!

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We’ve been dyeing up a storm, and now into our 2nd summer I feel comfortable sharing a little (sweet) tidbit with you, something we discovered through trial and error, and trying all sorts of plants and flowers we didn’t find information about in our books. Finding an easy, pretty pink was not the easiest thing – lots of yellows and greens and grays abound in nature, but pink (especially without mordant) was more elusive.

I have lots of photos and colors to show you in the coming days, and the pillow sham covers my little one and I made with long, thin, hand-dyed strips of cotton in so many delicate colors. And photos of our tentative forays into shibori folding, and dyeing.

By chance, last year, we discovered bee balm. One of our favorite perennial (and self-seeding) plants in the garden because it smells delightful and attracts its namesake very well. The pinkish red petals produce a beautiful pink color and here is how to prepare your dye bath.

After gathering up the petals (leaving the flower centers and seeds to dry up and sow for next year) put them in your dye pot with some water, and vinegar. We found that the acid vinegar brightens the dye bath and intensifies the pink color. Dyeing with little ones is a fantastic hands-on chemistry lesson – about what acids and bases do to dye baths. And a history lesson, about how ancient peoples (right up through pioneer days) used plants and materials from nature to color their worlds, especially their textiles. And a crafting lesson, about how to slowly produce a pillow sham cover, Waldorf playsilk or doll quilt from scratch – including the dyes.

I usually bring the pot to boil and then turn it down to a simmer. Once the petals have given all of their color (could be about an hour, but it depends on how you are cooking them down), you can strain your dye bath to remove the petals and leafy bits.

A large tea strainer works well, I’ve found.

The pink liquid is now ready to be used immediately, or stored for use later on. Below I’ve explained a little bit more about how to use the dye bath to make an eco friendly, non-toxic, naturally dyed pink playsilk, or dye cotton strips for sewing together into doll quilts, pillow sham covers or anything like that.

I generally use 30″ square playsilks, and find the beebalm produces a lovely, intense rose color on the playsilks. It’s even more saturated on the playsilks than on the cotton (see below).

To prepare our playsilks, I soak them in a bowl with hot water and vinegar (2:1 water to vinegar).

After a half an hour or so, and once my dye bath is hot in the pot once again, I unfold the pre-soaked playsilk and place it into the dye pot, where I let it sit for at least an hour, slowly soaking in the beebalm pink.

Then it’s time to rinse in cool water, and dry. A larger amount of beebalm, producing a more intense dye bath, will easily dye a few playsilks.

We also dyed some 2″ wide cotton strips, perfect for piecing together with other similarly dyed strips later on. I’ve found these work well when pre-mordanted with alum.

We found our alum at the local bulk store where it was found in the pickling section. I soaked our cotton strips in a hot water + few tbsp of alum for a few hours. You can even leave it in the pre-mordant for a day or more, until you are ready to dye with them. Then I followed exactly the same method as above, dyeing them, rinsing them and air drying them.

What sorts of plants and natural dyes have you experimented with?

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