SOLD: Beautiful Happyzine

I recently read an article about dying fabric with products found in the natural environment, and I was interested. I have to admit, when I initially saw this done, I found it boring and pointless, a skill I would never, ever need in my life – which was going to be exciting and one big party. In my defence, I was sitting in sixth form Chem. And now, a million years later, I’m starting to understand why Sarah – my Chem partner – got so excited about raiding the school garden for Marigolds.

I’ve got a theory that thistles must taste pretty good because they have so many prickles. It makes sense that if you have to work through that kind of armour, there’s going to be a pretty delicious centre. Blackberries support this. They have thorns on their stems, branches AND leaves, however, they’re guarding a really great tasting berry. So good in fact that after wrestling each berry from the plant, I very quickly had several offspring swooping on them – no regard whatsoever to my blood loss. I did manage to get some home, but the kids had a taste for blackberries, and they wanted more!

I have to admit, in the past I’ve appreciated the colour of fabric, but I haven’t take the time to really think of how it’s come to be this way. The first natural dyes were usually derived from plants. The very sought after colour purple was extracted from the colourful inner shell of a carnivourous snail! It was so expensive to make that it became known as the royal colour – but only after some purple greedy Emporer declared he’d kill anyone outside the royal family that tried to wear it! Fortunately the rest of the world were getting savvy with textile colouring and once chemical dyes started entering the scene, the cost of coloured fabric dropped closing the door on the dreary age of beige.

With the re-emergence of eco-friendly, skilled crafts, and the fevered eagreness of the hobby artisan, skills like dying using natural sources are making a comeback. And so I returned to the forest to collect another pottle of berries, but as I drove home listening to the kids excitedly planning a pudding around these delicious morsels, I realised it would be a huge waste of berries – and blood – to do anything other than eat those fine fruit. On pavlova! A tribute to the our beautiful country, the nasty little introduced weeds it supports, and the yummy berries they grow.

Tags: berries, crafts, marigolds