Plant dyes can be used on all sorts of fibres, even paper, so you can experiment with a wide variety of materials and shades. Here, though, we’ll concentrate on silk, as nothing beats it for a luxurious finish for a hand-tied bouquet. Silk is an animal fibre and takes up dyes better than plant-based fibres, and it can be used without a mordant (a fixative used before dyeing to make the material colourfast). It’s delicate, though, so lowtemperature dyeing techniques are best, and you should avoid subjecting it to sudden changes in temperature.
This project skips the mordanting, but if you’d like to find out about it then there’s plenty of information in my book, Botanical Inks. And you can buy UK-made, organic silk from botanicalinks.com – it takes up…
