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Thursday, September 15, 2011

Garden Sage Dyed Cotton Pulp

I read in the book Eco Colour: Botanical Dyes for Beautiful Textiles by India Flint that the leaves of garden sage make a red dye. This intrigued me and since I have several very robust Salvia officinalis plants, I decided to try it. I believe this must be a misprint. It is more than likely that the purple flowers will yield a red dye. I will try that next June. In the meantime I am very pleased with the sage green I got from these leaves.

leaves before cooking dyed pulp before & after rinsing

the dried, finished sheets

I simmered some of the used dye bath until it was reduced to half. The color is very dark. I believe this will make a wonderful ink.

1 comment:

  1. I too have India Flint's book and noticed that she had said that about sage - I also have quite a bit of sage in my garden. It could be that the soil in Australia produces a different colour in the plant, or that the sage plant there is a different plant to what we have here in North America. Your colour looks lovely though, I agree. Thanks so much for sharing the link to your blog on Etsy. (Inkyspider)

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