I’d gathered a basket of rose hips last autumn to make syrup, left them in the fridge and forgot about them. After a while I decided to make them into dye instead. Like the nettles, you just boil up the rose hips for an hour or so, leave them to steep and then use the dye directly on the fabric. The colour is a warm, soft peachy pink, I love how it looks with the nettle dye on this doll.
This was my first nettle dyed doll. The green wasn’t supposed to be so intense but it turned out to be a bit of a happy accident. I prefer working with plant dyes, firstly because there isn’t the same toxic stench, or need for rubber gloves that you have with synthetic dye, and the colour is so much softer and it seems to reflect light differently. These nettles were picked from my garden, dried then left to steep in boiling water for a few hours before dipping the doll into the dye bath.
