Over the last year or so with the amazing arts organisation Cabasa carnival arts we have been exploring everything natural dye from growing and foraging – to saving Avocado stones and onion peel. It’s been a great learning experience having the time to develop and play and create. We’ve made some really interesting and diverse shades and explored ancient dye plants and ways of harnessing colour from them.

I’ve really enjoyed the research and findings and find the link between these ancient dye plants and the world of medicinal plants and how a lot of the dye plants also have healing properties. Like madder and Green alkanet. It’s such a huge subject with so much to discover.

When we started the living dress project we took a dive into madder – an ancient dye plant used to produce reds, oranges and pinks.

Some of the explorations above are

Yellows from – Weld and Dyers Chamomile (both which we’ve been growing at our community garden and my allotment)

Orange created from over-dyeing the weld silk with Madder

Above a Madder pot which created the rich orange colour and many beautiful reds in the madder dress.

Above is a dye bath of dyers chamomile – slowly simmering to gently draw the Rich yellow colour from the flowers.

After this the dye bath is strained and mordanted fabric added to the pot to soak up the rich yellow liquid.

Here is the Living dress Sculpture designed by Emily wood at Cabasa Carnival arts. The structure created by incredible artist Iola Weir and Dressed by Cabasa and community groups in Oldham. We created naturally dyed patched with a range of women lead community groups in Oldham as the theme of the Oldham dressed developed, we researched the rich textile heritage of the area and explored ideas of the cotton industry and the working conditions around the world of women and children involved in the various processes to create the cotton cloth used world wide for clothing