I have been very inspired by early Native American art. I love the beautiful mellow colours of the natural dyes they used to add colour to their porcupine quill embroidery.
Having a lot of experience with natural dyes I thought it about time a attacked this new challenge! I thought I would treat them the same way as I treat wool. I first cleaned the grubby porcupine quills. The next stage is to mordant them, I used alum.
The quills I dyed with onion skins came out as expected, a lovely shade of yellow. It is actually quite bright.
My next challenge was madder. I have always had difficulties with madder on wool, especially getting a red. But I knew I would get a lovely colour. I actually achieved a number of great shades of orange through to an amazing red! I have never managed to get a red with madder!
Next I tried to get a black. I used oak galls, Iron along with walnut husks. I dyed these for hours and hours but did not manage to get a black! I did get a lovely grey with one or two black quills.
I plan to use these quills to make a trail bag. I love walking and spending time in the New Forest and I wanted a bag to take with me. I do not want anything commercial or artificial on this bag. I have a lot of brain tanned buckskin bits. I have sewn lots of these pieces together to make a large patchwork. This will be my bag... eventually.
Thes rosettes are not naturally dyed. I used a commercial dye.
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