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Welcome
Welcome to Around the World in 80 Dyes, an exploration of natural dyes for fabric and fiber, with a current focus on creating and manipulating yellows produced by native flowers, nuts, barks, minerals and waste products.
About Us and Natural Dye
Who?
What?
What?
Janet Day, the owner and artist behind Around the World in 80 Dyes. A life-long quilter and textile artist, daughter of painters, curious kid from the hippie era with a fascination for color and its creation.
What?
What?
What?
An adventure through creating color from natural dye sources, including using kitchen waste, yard waste, weeds, flowers, barks and dirts to sustainably create dyes. Through experimentation and travel, I'll record it all on the blog and through new projects.
Why?
What?
Why?
After years of smashing flowers into textiles and staining my fingernails in pots of dye, it's time to share my discoveries and disasters more widely so others can join the adventure in natural dyes around the world.
The Yellow project
About the Yellow Project
An August 2024 natural dyeing workshop in Tangier offered a challenge. Host and international textile artist Yto Barrada proposed the best way to really understand a dye source or a color is to spend a lot of time pushing its boundaries.
A lot of time: At least one month with one type of flower or other dye source. Working with only that color day after day. Longer to really see how far a natural color can go.
I took this challenge to heart and launched what I am calling my Yellow Project, spending at least a year working with natural sources for yellow dyes from locations all over the world.
Yellow is often the easiest color to achieve and can be coaxed from innumerable natural sources: flowers, leaves, barks, dirt and rocks.
Northern Europe’s weld plant has been used for millennia to produce a bright yellow. Marigold and coreopsis are the novice dyers friends for their ease of use. The green and white leaves of the silver poplar tree nonsensically produce a taxi-bright shade of yellow. Fustic from Argentina was used for the khaki shade of World War I military uniforms.
And yellow is a versatile color easily adjusted and changed by water pH, growing location, quantity of dye source, whether it’s fresh, dried or frozen, heat, time, mordants, additives and after-dye baths.
I started this project with three varieties of coreopsis growing in my garden and will expand it to include whatever yellow color source I find wherever my travels take me.
Follow the Project Progress
Updates in my pursuit of the color yellow will be posted here as well as on Instagram - @80dyes - and in my blog (read blog entries in the section below or sign up to receive them in an emai)..
Please check back occasionally to see how the effort goes.
The Coreopsis quilt -- Nov. 2024
The First Yellow Project Quilt
The First Yellow Project Quilt
The First Yellow Project Quilt
'One Thousand Yellow Flowers Dyed to Make This Quilt.' All of the colors and prints are from my experiments with coreopsis.
The Many Colors of Coreopsis
The First Yellow Project Quilt
The First Yellow Project Quilt
Coreopsis blossoms produced range of oranges, yellows, gold, green, browns, even leaning toward red and pink.
Hand Quilted
The First Yellow Project Quilt
Hand Quilted
Fabrics in the decorative quilt are various cottons, raw and processed silks and linen. Machine pieced and hand quilted.
Moving on to marigold -- Oct. 2024
Hardy Marigold
Fresh, Dried or Frozen
Fresh, Dried or Frozen
Marigold comes in dozens of varieties and grows just about everywhere. In our semi-arid Colorado climate, the dead flowers dry out instead of rotting and can still create dye color.
Fresh, Dried or Frozen
Fresh, Dried or Frozen
Fresh, Dried or Frozen
There are many ways to use the flower as a dye source: fresh, frozen, dried, with the sepal (green part connecting the flower to the stem) or without it and just using the petals.
Consistently Yellow
Fresh, Dried or Frozen
Consistently Yellow
Regardless of the blossom color, marigold consistently produces a yellow dye, but it can be shifted to other tones and colors with different mordants, additives and after-dye dips.
a perfect medium yellow with coreopsis -- Oct. 2024
Moving Beyond Orange
Moving Beyond Orange
Moving Beyond Orange
I saved and dried flowers from a previous pot and reused them at 50% WOF (weight of fabric) in 3 quarts of tap water. Soaked for 2 hours, heated for a half hour without straining. A little vinegar brought the pH down to 5. Cotton and silk fabric soaked in the pot overnight.
Medium Yellow
Moving Beyond Orange
Moving Beyond Orange
The cotton and silk came out of the pot a vibrant medium yellow and dried slightly lighter. A few tiny orange spots showed up from some direct contact with the flower petals in the dye bath.
Coreopsis Flowers used in the yellow project -- Sept. 2024
Coreopsis
The Colors of Coreopsis
The Colors of Coreopsis
Coreopsis basalis is one of several varieties of the flower that produces fabric and fiber dyes ranging from bright orange to deep yellow.
The Colors of Coreopsis
The Colors of Coreopsis
The Colors of Coreopsis
Coreopsis flowers can create a variety of colors. This image, from left, shows a green/brown from dipping the dyed swatch in rusty water, orange hues from the addition of soda ash to increase the dye bath pH, and yellows made by the addition of citric acid or vinegar to lower the pH.
Taking Notes
The Colors of Coreopsis
Taking Notes
Careful measurements and detailed note taking are crucial in natural dye color manipulation. A difference in the weight of fabric vs. weight of dye source, the water pH, heat levels and additives all influence the resulting color.
EVENTS, EXHIBITS, SHOWS
current and upcoming
Old Walls Gallery R3SI$T! show of protest art
Nov. 1 - Dec. 20, 2024
820 Kent Ave., NW, Albuquerque, New Mexico
Colorado College Arts & Crafts Fair
Friday, Dec. 6, 4-8pm
Saturday, Dec. 7, 10am-5pm
Worner Campus Center, 902 N. Cascade Ave., Colorado Springs, Colorado
Check back for more information and details about arts fairs, fiber festivals,gallery show and other events for the remainder of 2024 and into 2025.
PAST EXHIBITS
Around the World in 80 Dyes naturally dyed textile art has been exhibited at the following galleries:
The Lab on Santa Fe experimental art gallery in Denver, Colorado
Liminal Space Gallery in Pueblo, Colorado
Paquette Gallery, Steam Plant Event Center in Salida, Colorado
PACE arts center in Parker, Colorado
Around the world in 80 dyes gallery exhibits
Ugly Duckling quilt at the Salida Fiber Festival exhibit at the Paquette Gallery, Steam Plant event center. Salida, Colorado 2024. 84x48 inches.
Constructed of 2-inch strips of naturally dyed and/or printed cotton or linen fabric in a Log Cabin pattern. Hand quilted..
Helping Hands displayed at the PACE Gallery, Parker Arts, Culture and Event Center. Parker, Colorado 2024. 34x42 inches.
Thrifted and upcycled fabrics and vintage evening gloves dyed with natural sources. Hand quilted.
SOURCES, PARTNERSHIPS, SUPPORT
Color Sources
Fabric, Fiber Sources
Fabric, Fiber Sources
Avocado pits provided by Stir Coffee & Cocktails, North Wahsatch Avenue, Colorado Springs, CO
Flowers provided by garden centers in Colorado Springs, CO, friends and neighbors.
Fabric, Fiber Sources
Fabric, Fiber Sources
Fabric, Fiber Sources
Thrifted and up-cycled fabrics, fibers and linens from Who Gives a Scrap, Arcturus Drive, Colorado Springs, CO
Graphics and Design
Fabric, Fiber Sources
Graphics and Design
Logo, graphics and design by James Rosanio, Blue Claw Graphics & Design, Medford, New Jersey.