Dyeing a Cotton Dress with Natural Dyes, Part 1: the Alkaline Mordent

I have a pretty dress but I don't wear very often anymore because it's peach, and peach is a colour that's not really me, y'know? I used to wear it to work, because I work in a Steiner kindergarten where our days are colour themed. Thursdays are orange days, and peach is kinda-sorta-close-enough to orange that I could get away with it. But with the reduction in my work days, I no longer work on orange day, so the dress doesn't get worn.

But I really like the style of the dress. It looks especially good with a pair of cowboy boots and a scarf. So, in an effort to make it into something I'll keep wearing, I'm going to try and dye it using natural dyes. I'm going to aim for a rusty red colour, or perhaps a chocolatey brown, but before I can try adding colour, there's a few preparatory steps I need to take.

I received a wonderful book on natural dying for my birthday a few years ago: India Flint's Eco Colour. It's an inspiring book, full of ideas for a number of dye-stuffs and processes and many, many beautiful pictures. In a way it's a little frustrating -- I want to be able to jump straight in and create the beautifully textured and 'eco-printed' textiles featured in the book, but I guess I have to learn the basics first.

Flint's book doesn't have much in the way of formulas or recipes, rather it provides the basic principles and it's up to the reader/crafter to develop the process themselves. So the following is an account of my experiment based on ideas in the book.

The dress is cotton, which needs processing and pre-mordanting before it will adequately take up colour from plant based dyes, which are acidic. Either an alkaline or a protein based mordant on its own will work, but one layered over the other will work better, and this is what I'm going to try out. For an alkaline solution, I'm going to use tea, and I'll try a milk solution for the protein.

I've decided to use tea because it's quite a simple process for my first project; I drink a lot of tea, and so have a lot of tea-leaves to hand; and the tea will also colour the fabric a little, which I think I would like. You can also use tea as a dye-stuff itself, like when you 'antique' fabric or paper with a tea solution. But in my case, I'm going to colour it further with other dyes. Eventually.

First, I collected all my used tea-leaves, and un-drunk (black) tea for a week in a stainless steel pot. (It has to be stainless steel, or some other type of non-reactive metal, or the metal itself will also act as mordent. Which could also be interesting.) All that week, the leaves sat stewing in a warm place, the solution getting stronger.

Then I strained the tea-leaves out.

And then a second time with a piece of fabric attached to the sieve to collect the finer particles in the solution.

The I soaked the dress in the solution for about four days and nights.

After soaking in the tea-bath, I spun it in the washing machine without rinsing it, and hung it out to dry.

I was expecting more of an colour impact from the tea. It's hard to tell in this picture, but the dress is ... well, not so much darker as a bit duller. I've since found out from another book that if you're using used tea-leaves, you need to use significantly more, which seems kinda obvious really, but I didn't think about it at the time. Since I used this process as a mordent, and not for the purposes of obtaining colour, I'm not too worried. If I wasn't going to use another mordent process, then I would probably repeat this process with the tea-leaves, just to make sure that the mordent would work. But I'm going to also do a protein mordent, so between the two, I'm sure they'll work.

And now, I'm going to 'rest' the garment. That is, put it away in a draw for a week or two before doing anything further to it, to allow the mordent to 'develop'. This part isn't absolutely necessary -- you could dye it straight away -- but it helps achieve better results. Some natural dyeing traditions recommend leaving it to develop for a year! But I'm just going to leave it for a month or so, all up.

And so that's the first part done. Stay tuned for part two: the Protein Mordent!

Walking the Path

I am so excited. Tomorrow I return to uni for the year and my new working arrangements commence. As from tomorrow, my work hours will be less, and I’ve taken on one more uni subject a semester. Even though I’ll be earning less money (and I wasn’t earning that much to begin with...) this balance feels better. From now on, I’ll be a publishing student who supports herself by working in childcare, not a childcare worker who studies publishing in her spare time. It’s a small distinction, I know, but an important one.

It feels like my new year is starting now, and these last two months have been a sort of holding pattern – necessary to recharge and regroup and save a little cash, but not the year proper.

This week, there is also a Transition Darebin meeting happening. At this meeting, I’ll be talking to members of the ex-initiating group about the role I am to play. I’ve volunteered myself – for better or for worse – for the role of media officer. I figure it’ll be a way to use my new found publishing and communications skills for sustainability and community, and it might even look good on my resume...

I’ve also joined the ‘Clothing and Materials Working Group’ (better name yet to come) working with some other people around ethical and sustainable clothing and crafts.

In a way, this week feels like a microcosm of the rest of the year to come – shifting focus from the dominance of a career that doesn’t quite make my heart sing, to all the things I really do want: books and how to make them, and sustainable living. It feels so exciting and I feel the presence and power of it.

I was at a talk today at the Thornbury theatre, Women of Letters. Six women wrote a letter to their ‘turning point’ and read them out aloud to us. One awkwardly beautiful woman told us her turning point came to her as an epiphany one listless, leisurely afternoon in a long line of listless, leisurely afternoons. It was something I’ve heard many times before, but there was something about the immediacy of this young woman standing before me that really made it resonate this time; she could have been me, so her story could have been mine. ‘Find your passion and stick to it,’ she said. ‘Walk that path, even when it’s hard,’ and she tattooed a compass on her wrist to remind her.

I have no compass tattooed on my wrist, but I can feel it pulling me in the right direction. I know my passions now, better each day. And I’m walking the path.

Transition Towns

Upon my return from travelling in Africa, I spent two months recovering from broken ribs on my mother’s farm, Purple Pear. Here, sitting around the dining room table drinking tea and nibbling on home-made biscuits, I witnessed the first few meetings of Transition Maitland, and had my introduction to the Transition Towns movement.

Transition Towns, a movement that began in England in 2006 aims to create societies resilient against two of the biggest challenges of our time: climate change and peak oil. It aims to do this by strengthening local communities and creating initiatives which move away from a reliance on fossil fuels and towards self-sustainability.

It was a very exciting time to be around Transition Maitland, to be a part of its visioning process and the first few events. I had the sense of it being a very important initiative, with the right focus for me – dealing with important problems with an active, but not overly political approach. I felt torn about leaving, then, when everything seemed to be happening, but in the end I cam to Melbourne anyway. However, I knew this movement was something I wanted to be a part of, so I started looking into it when I arrived.

I’d heard of a few Transition movements in Melbourne. There was one for our Local Government area, Transition Yarra, but aside from a few movie nights (which I’d managed to miss due to uni assignment due dates and the like) it didn’t seem to be very active. Then there were two others nearby: Transition Brunswick and Transition Darebin.

We went to a picnic run by Transition Brunswick on what felt like the hottest day of the year (especially after biking for half an hour!) which was fun. It seems like an energetic group with a lot of exciting ideas about what to do next. There was a talk from the sustainability officer from Moreland council about waste reduction and recycling, which was rather interesting. A lot of it was stuff I was already aware of, but there was some new stuff too, like: I didn’t know that the somewhat squishy plastic of the biscuit tray is recyclable, as is aluminium foil. Now I do. Or: in Germany, there is a tax on packaging. In an effort to create a ‘polluter pays system’, the more packaging a product has, the more the tax the producer of the product must pay. Also, if a product at the supermarket has more than one layer of packaging (breakfast cereals in plastic and then in a cardboard box, or individually wrapped muesli bars, for instance) you can leave the outer layers at the checkout and the store has to deal with them. Which just sounds fantastic to me. Lets all move to Germany.

It was a fun afternoon, but, all in all, it wasn’t quite what I was after. For starters, I want to move to a different area of Melbourne – not too far away, but not in Brunswick either. And secondly, while Transition Brunswick is an exciting new group, it is just that: new. And with any new community group, there is a lot of planning and talking to be done. While I appreciate that this stage is important and necessary, I really want to be doing right now. So, it was off to investigate Transition Darebin.

Transition Darebin felt like what I was after from the start. It’s in the area where I want to live, and it’s been running for nearly two years. All the groundwork has been sorted out and now it’s time to get stuck into things.

Dom and I attended the kickoff meeting in early February, and it seems we came at a good time. The initiating committee – a group of skilled and enthusiastic people who’d established Transition Darebin – were wrapping up and preparing to take on less lime-lit roles. They asked for volunteers to take on some of the key roles like IT person, meetings co-ordinator, council liaison and so on. I put my hand up to be the media liaison, because I think it will be a nice way to link in my current studies with my involvement in Transition Towns.

There was a lot of talk about where to go next. Now that the group is established with a fairly strong active membership, there are a lot of ideas floating around for exciting projects for the group: urban orchards, food swaps, preserving workshops, and the one I was most interested in was for a group of people who meet regularly to swap skills and tips about sustainable craft. Right up my alley!

So, a very interesting introduction to Transition Darebin. There’ll be another meeting soon where we will all plan the next steps in the new project working groups, and I’ll meet up soon with someone who’ll introduce me to the media liaison ropes. This year is shaping up to be something good!

New Year's Resolution: the Rules

The rules are very simple, really: no spending money on clothes for twelve months, period. Not new clothes, not second-hand clothes, not local clothes. Nada. No asking for clothing to be given/bought for me, either. No more clothes.

Like any rules, however, there are exceptions. In this case, underwear and hosiery are exceptions, because I can't see any way around it. I have to wear socks and knickers (well, I don't have to, but they make life more comfortable) and the items I have are going to wear out, and I can't really substitute things I already have for them. (If you've got any ideas around this problem, let me know!) So I can buy new underwear and hosiery, but purchases must be kept to a minimum and local, ethical and organic wherever possible.

As I am going for a few internships and other professional interviews this year, I may need to acquire some clothing suitable for such a situation. Wherever possible, I would first attempt to borrow any necessary items, and if that's not possible, then I'd try second hand, and only failing that would I buy new.

And I can accept gifts of clothing, just not ask for it or seek it out. Especially if the clothes are on their way to landfill or vinnies.

So there are the rules. Let's hope that publishing them here will keep me honest!

New Year's Resolution: the Idea

Sitting in a creek at a festival on New Year’s Eve, I decided my resolution for the coming year would be that I would not buy any clothes. No new clothes. No second-hand clothes, either. No sales clothes, no op-shop clothes, no local, hand-made clothes. Not a cent on clothes for a whole year.

Why? you ask. Well that’s an interesting question, and one I’m not sure I know the full answer to, but I’ll try and muddle it out...

I have never been a fashionista. I don’t have a pressing need to keep up with the latest fashion, I don’t have an addiction to shopping and a sale rack does not set my heart a-flutter, so it’s not to curb an immoderate habit. I don’t have an excessive consumption of clothes, there are no clothes hiding in boxes in the attic and I can still close the doors to my wardrobe with a minimum of fuss. So I don’t need to go on a clothes diet. But it does make sense financially for me to cut back in as many ways as possible this year. Returning to full–time study and cutting back my hours in paid work, I’m not going to have much extra cash for spending on unnecessary clothes.

And that there’s the rub: unnecessary clothes. I have enough. I have enough to wear to work, enough to wear to play, enough that is suitable for uni, for a night on the town, to work in the garden and to lounge in the house. That is enough. I wont buy any more clothes this year, because I just don’t need them.

The inspiration for this decision came originally from an American artist named Alex Martin. In a performance artwork, Alex wore the same little brown dress for a year as a statement against the consumerism of society and fashion, and documents it in her blog, Little Brown Dress. Here, she talks about her reasons: “I challenged myself to reject the economic system that pushes over-consumption, and the bill of goods that has been sold, especially to women, about what makes a person good, attractive and interesting. Clothes are a big part of this image, and the expectation in time, effort, and financial investment is immense.”

Now, I’m not going to wear exactly the same thing for a whole year, but her reasons for doing so struck a chord with me, and so for a whole year, I’m just going to make do with what I have and buy no more.

I’m by no means the first to do this. In America, there are hundreds of women (and a few men) who’ve signed up for the Great American Apparel Diet to do exactly what I am doing: no new clothes for twelve months. Much closer to home, a local woman details her year without buying new clothes on the Transition Darebin blog.

And it almost goes without saying the many millions of people who do it all year, every year through extreme poverty. Like the women I lived and worked with in rural Kenya last year, for whom buying any clothes was a luxury; who had a few changes of day-wear, well worn from repeated hand-washing, and one immaculate twin-set in vibrantly coloured fabric for the occasions where they needed to looked their best. As I sit in a cafe in Fitzroy, or walk down Sydney road and fret about seeming un-hip or daggy and coveting the clothing I see around me, the memory of these African women is a humbling reminder of how little clothing a person truly needs.

I’m taking as my role-model in this endeavour the thrifty 1930s housewife: a woman who had few outfits, but always looked presentable, and made the best of the resources she had. Her clothing was made and laundered with great care, fabric was chosen for its durability and patterns for their enduring style. With these values firmly in mind, I set forth on my year with thrift, mindfulness and a sense of adventure!

Introductions

Eight months ago, my partner and I moved to Melbourne from regional New South Wales. Our reasons were varied. For me, I came to Melbourne to study publishing at Melbourne University, and to hopefully open up some options for work (jobs for people with a background in theatre and writing are a little thin on the ground in a small town). My partner came to see what the city might offer in the way of professional roles in environmental sustainability (again, not so many of those where we’re from). And both of us thought we might like a little taste of the big city before we retreat to try our dream of living on the land – soak up all the theatre, art and exciting new sustainability initiatives, before setting up our cabin in the hills (or yurt in the woods, as the case may be).

So, we moved here. But I had a concern.

Both of us are pretty sustainability-minded – focussed on green-living, caring for the environment, and preparing for a post-peak oil, post-climate change era. Up north, the life we led made a focus on these things easy. My Mum and her partner have a biodynamic farm up there called Purple Pear, so we always had plenty of fresh veggies, yoghurt, honey and preserves. I lived in a collective where we supported each other to keep our foot-print low. I knew where to go to get organic produce and I knew all the ways to get around town and beyond by bike or public transport. In short, I knew just how to live gently on the earth in that time and place..

But I was leaving that behind, striking out in a new and unknown place. I would need to find a new source for all my green goodies, find somewhere to get my local fruit and find a new community of like-minded people. I was worried it would be too hard to do in the city, that it would be expensive, or that I’d lose momentum and lose my way.

But where there’s a will, there’s a way, and I made a firm commitment myself to keep living as sustainably as I could. Perhaps even to use this as an opportunity add new practices to my life, and break some old, bad habits. I’ve still got a lot to learn! And this blog is a record of my attempts to tread lightly, find creative ways to reduce, reuse and recycle, and live sustainable urban life.