dyeing wool / felt

[VM]

Another question - planning to try out some natural dyeing so can make felt in my own colours and wonder if anyone else has experience of it - in particular whether works better to make felt and then dye it or dye the wool first and then felt it. Presumably felt might shrink more when dyed as a piece?

thanks for any answers - will post any info about experience when manage to do it!

longer term fantasies about growing the dye plants on the allotment... but perhaps one step at a time

[Clara]

I dyed a yak wool shawl with some of my mulberries this year, the colour was fantastic rich bright pink, I followed the instructions off the internet which said that I didn´t need to use a mordant - so I didn´t and unfortunately all the dye washed out on first rinse

My understanding from researching this project was that it is change in temperature that causes shrinkage - which is presumably part of the felting process anyway? I think I did my shawl hot and didn´t have any probs because I kept the temperature of the dyeing and rinsing water the same.

I´d love to get more into natural dyes, but then I have so many "want to dos" I get stuck and do none! Slowly slowly as they say round these parts!

Clara x.

[snapdragon]

my one (so far) foray into felting I did a top layer of dyed 'bits' on base layers of natural