Mushrooms for Tea?

Had a lovely two days with Jan and Susan making Collograph Prints. It really suits my textiley style. These were based on my Fungi drawings.

Clusters

The Clusters Range has been dyed with Sanderswood

Clusters Scarf

Gills and Cells

The Gills and Cells range was dyed with Dyers’ Chamomile.

Gills and Cells Handbag

Gills and Cells Scarf

Dyed in the Wool

After considerable experimentation I have chosen to work with the following colour ranges, which are based on my fungi studies.

Sanderswood

Dyers’ Chamomile

Madder

Wool weave and knit unite

Now I am happy with the dyeing results and knitted and manipulated forms the challenge is to combine them. I keep thinking about how the fungi grow on trees and fallen logs. Can I make my constructed textile fungi grow on my tweedy surfaces?

Early samples on ordinary wool weaves (and using existing acid dyed knit samples) – need to ration my precious Harris Tweed resources.

Dyeing to tell ….

Mamouth dyeing sessions were needed to build up a reference of naturally dyed samples. I used prepared dye stuffs (but not extracts) which looked as if they would produce the colours I found in my fungi samples. Half of each sample set was mordanted with Alum and then each of these subsets was modified with four different elements.

I love this box of labelled samples but do have them organised into a folder for easy future reference!

My favourite knit sample

The ‘squashy’ cup fungi works wonderfully in knit – think this will develop into something great – so excited!

Some knitted mushrooms

Gills

Cups

and Cells.

What’s in the cup?

Cup-like fungi.

Really love these – can’t wait to get knitting.

Lots of little cells

Believe it or not this is the underside of a fungi.