Indigo in the Garden with Friends

We had a beautiful, cool early summer day filled with talking, laughing, and dyeing with indigo—using a small vat I had prepared for our session.

Helen had spent hours the day before meticulously creating intricate shibori stitching on a 1.5 x 1m piece of linen cloth—a generous size that, as it turned out, was perfect for making a dress!

Bron brought along an old cotton sheet, which she tore into smaller squares to experiment with various resist dyeing techniques such as scrunching, tying, and folding.

I brought several of my hand-spun wool skeins, which I had previously dyed with natural plant dyes the week before—using birch leaf and bracken fern from the garden, weld, and mountain ash (Eucalyptus regnans) from the end of my road. I opted for a quick dip-dyeing process, submerging each skein for just 2-3 seconds. The results were stunning, yielding a range of beautiful greens. I was pleasantly surprised by the strength of the indigo vat and plan to try a weaker mix next time for overdyeing plant-dyed wool skeins to achieve subtler effects.

For the vat, I used a hydrosulphite recipe based on Vivien Prideaux’s A Handbook of Indigo Dyeing and Kraftkolour’s Synthetic Indigo Instructions. My recipe consisted of 5g of indigo to 4 litres of water—a perfect volume for the three of us to experiment freely. About 20 minutes before dyeing, I added an additional 10g of hydrosulphite though, as the vat hadn’t quite turned the ideal pale clear green yet. By the end of our session, the vat had become slightly contaminated with oxygen, but I hope to revive it, as there's still plenty of indigo left.

The entire day was an absolute joy, filled with laughter, creativity, and reflection. I'm eagerly anticipating seeing Helen's finished dress, Bron's cloth adorned with her gold-scribed poetry, and the continued evolution of my dyed yarn—leading to my next project: a handwoven shawl.

I'm particularly excited about exploring botanical and plant-based colour layering, using indigo as the final dye. Ultimately, my goal is to experiment with Indigofera Australis over local indigenous plants, barks, and leaves. Stay tuned for more on this journey!