Katajamäki -Mushrooms Dye Workshop in Finland

Natural Dyes

Terttu Hassi was one of the instructors at the Dyers Week in Finland. She gave a talk about her experiences as a natural dyer. Her mother was a dyer and supported her family by dyeing yarn during the war years in Finland. She learned the techniques and recipes from her mother. She also studied natural dyes and indigo in Norway.

For mordants, she uses mostly alum. Instead of using iron for darker colours, she uses natural grey wool.

She has found that she has been able to significantly reduce the amount of mordant and still achieve good colour results. Her alum mordant bath consists of 12 grams alum, 4 grams tartaric acid and is sufficient to dye 2-3 kgs of yarn. For the next bath, she doesn't throw out the mordant but keeps it going all summer by adding 1/2 the quantity of mordant each time. i.e. 6 grams alum, 2 grams tartaric acid. When she has finished dyeing for the day, she doesn't let the mordanted yarn dry out but stores it wet in plastic bags. She has found that she can leave the wet yarn for 6-8 days in a plastic bag without damaging the yarn.

Occasionally she uses chrome or tin mordants, to get different colours. She doesn't dispose of the mordant after use, but stores them in glass bottles for reuse. She has been reusing a chrome mordant for about 5 years.

Terttu dyes large quantities of yarn each summer - approx. 100 kg. She makes about 30 litres of a strong dye bath. The dye bath is cooked all day and the next day she dyes the yarn. She splits the dye bath into 10 litre quantities and dilutes it for the colour she wants. The rest is used for subsequent dye baths and colour mixing. The yarn is dyed and left for a day or 2 in the dye solution to get stronger colours.

She doesn't use grasses for dyes as she has found that the colour is quite weak and isn't worth the effort. For flowers, she uses the whole top of the flower, not just the petals. Seed pods are ground with a coffee grinder.

Some of the natural dyes used in the samples: