31/08/2026
A pile of lichen, stone, mist and impossible pink. 💖
I started with 500g of white Rambouillet fleece and four natural-dye baths:
• cool pink from cochineal
• soft peach-pink from madder root
• periwinkle-grey from logwood and titanium
• lichen green made by layering logwood and titanium over cutch and fustic
Once the fleece was dry, I began carding the colours into a family of shifting batts rather than blending everything into one uniform shade. Some are quiet and lichen-like; others move through salmon, mauve and startling cochineal pink.
I’ve added wisps of very fine antique flax for a dry, weathered gleam, plus the tiniest traces of blue-steel Angelina—just enough to suggest wet stone catching the light.
The plan is to spin the batts into a sequential, chain-plied yarn and—if the finished meterage agrees—crochet it into a long, witchy waistcoat.
Natural dyeing is always the beginning of a conversation rather than the end: first the dye plants make the colours, then carding changes their relationships, spinning changes them again, and eventually the cloth tells you what they became.
madderdye fibreart slowtextiles
