September Meeting 2019

Judy is a long draw spinner and has been spinning, weaving and dyeing for over thirty years. She’s an expert on Natural Dyeing creating a good range of colours using a variety of plants. Weld and dyers greenweed for yellows, madder and cochineal for reds, coreopsis for orange, indigo for blue and a combination of these for green and purple. Logwood also gives purples and greens when over dyeing yellow.

Judy uses flowers, stems, roots and skins in her natural dyeing technique.

Her book Natural Dyes describes how to dye with plants that can be grown in the garden or collected from the countryside; it is lavishly and delightfully illustrated by RHS medalist, Sally Pinhey with accurate and detailed botanical watercolours as well as photographs of yarn samples of the colours each plant produces. Judy’s book includes instructions on solar dyeing, step by step guide to dyeing wool, silk, cotton and felt in all its forms and gives five different garden designs using dye plants.