Natural Colours: The idea behind

"NATURAL COLOURS" is about CHEMISTRY, COLOUR and NATURAL SOURCES.

 

All the little creatures that form Natural colours installation has been needle felted...

...with white wool. Here a picture of an Irish sheep from Donegal.

And they have been dyed afterwards with common vegetables. Vegetables that can be found in your kitchen or back garden.

As a yellow dye, I used the skin from the onion. Because I am Spanish and my boyfriend is French, at home there is a lot of cooking that involve onion. For the last two month, I had a shoe box in my kitchen where I kept the skin of the onion. Then I just added them to a pot with hot water, I added my woolly creatures, and after 1 hour, all was yellow!

Red cabbage is my favorite dye. By changing the pH (adding acid or basic substances) you can change the colour.
Just chopped red cabbage and hot water gives a nice purple dye. The woolly pieces need top stay overnight.

By adding a basic substance as hand soap or soda, the purple dye will change to green!

But by adding an acid as lemon or vinegar, the purple dye change to pink. Almost magic!

Teas are great dyers, too. Raspberry and cranberry tea give a lovely red.

Natural colours can be used as water colours (if working with very concentrated and thick solutions); or as a dyers for yarn, felt, cotton, fabric... (just remember to rinse well at the end); or to colour your natural play dough!

Finally, Natural dyeing is about experimenting, transforming, creating and most important: about fun and excitement!