Natural Dyes

I love to garden, I find it very therapeutic and I feel regenerated by it. I was bought up by my father and grandfather cultivating a kitchen garden, here I learned to love and respect nature, to harvest and sow in the balance between giving and taking. From my grandmother I learned that the key to good cooking is to create your own recipes. I use these skills to create natural colours from plant dyes.

Since I discovered botanical printing lots of new plants have arrived in my garden and kitchen garden, it keeps me pretty busy but it also gives me a lot of joy.

Natural dyes are an effective and ecological alternative to synthetic dyes, they are renewable and biodegradable and they fix well to many natural and plant fibres. They are particularly suited to cotton, linen, wool and silk which are the materials I use the most.

Whilst exploring the alchemy of the colours obtained I noticed the richness of the various tones which, whilst they might weather more over time are more ‘alive’ with shades and natural shadows of unparalleled beauty.

For example Japanese maple leaves make colours varying from pink to grey, wild fennel from yellow to vivid green and the walnut husk gives a very intense brown…

I find it amazing to be able to dye a fabric thinking of the person who will wear it, or to use a particular leaf rather than another, with a vision of the final product, bringing my completely abstract idea into life and in the process immortalizing the nature that surrounds us and then wearing it!.

Eco-printing is a real craft, personal and intimate, hard to imitate and reproduce industrially. This is why every piece is unique and can never be recreated.

You can see some of my work on this site and contact me if you want to order something made to measure for you. In addition to garments (scarfs, foulard, shirts, dresses bags …) I also make household objects such as pillowcases, wall hangings, works of art, table runners and tablecloths amongst other things..

Cotton can be washed in a washing machine at 30° whilst wool and silk should be washed by hand. All fabrics should however be dried in the shade in order for them to maintain the luminosity of their colours.