journal – Wool and Nature

Botanical pillows

march 2025

Lately, I have been working on a small collection of pillow covers. This new collection is inspired by a botanical dye garden of my dreams. A place where colour comes to life. Each illustration is a tribute to the plants that not only bring beauty to a garden but also gives colour in my dye bath.

I carefully selected some dye plants that spoke to me. Margolds, safflower, calendula and tansy that give rich golden tones in a dye bath. Alongside these dye plants, I also included flowers like poppies and thistles – not for their dyeing properties, but for their beauty and the way they shape our garden. The natural colours I dyed with reflect the gentle fading and transformation that happens in nature.

The pillows are naturally dyed with a colour palette that was chosen intuitively. Chestnut, which creates warm earthy browns, nettles for their soft, muted greens and indigo with it’s deep, calming blues. These plant-based dyes created subtle variations in tone, making each pillow unique in it’s own way.

To bring out the details of these plants, I embroidered some of the pillows, adding a layer of texture and depth. The hand-stitching follow the natural curves of flower petals, leaves or the feathers of a bird. I feel it adds an extra dimention to the botanical illustration.

Botanical illustrations

february 2025

It’s February and the days are slowly growing longer. We have had some cold days but overall it has been a gentle winter so far. At the beginning of this year I have been diving into the slow process of making a small series of botanical patches.

I started dyeing with onion skins, pomegranate and chestnut, each offering muted oranges, soft ochres and earthy browns. These colours feel like nature and reflect the landscape I see around me these winter months. But is is not all about the colour. Through painting plants and flowers, I try to capture my mind’s eye of nature, the way I perceive it in it’s beauty.

Hopefully this new collection inspires you. I can’t wait to see how these pieces find their new homes!

Changing Colours

september 2024

Hope you are all well and enjoyed your summer, wherever you found yourself. I am not sure what happened to that time, it feels as though summer has already come and gone… There have been trips to the river, walks in the woods, fresh garden meals, preserving and jam making, knitting and a bit of traveling. It has been a very pleasant summer.

I wanted to share with you also what I have been working on these summer weeks. Because the hot summer days the colours in our garden were slowly fading, as well as the wild flowers along the roads and in the forests. I love these fading colours of the flowers and the different shades of earthy colours that the landscape slowly reveales at the end of summer.

My creative process is always intuitive, never really sure where it goes. But I knew I wanted to work with these earthy shades of the changing seasons. I really love to make simple botanical illustrations that immediately speak to my love for this beautiful earth. First I make quick sketches of some flowers or plants that I noticed during my walks and then I hand-paint these ideas onto linen. While painting these flowers I dream about the colours I want to dye with, trusting myself and intuition.

I become attached to the pieces I make, translating my small world into illustrations and colours. I love how the natural and subdued colours of this collection turned out.

Fall has definitely entered our little hamlet, in the mornings the air feels crisp, the days are much shorter, socks in the evening.

Thank you so much for your continuing support and your time reading my thoughts. I am so excited to share these textiles with you and I hope you feel close to the natural world when you hold them in your hands.

Summer Sun

july 2024

It has been a wonderful summer here. I love where I live very much and I try to go outside as much as I can. We have had lots of rain here in the mountains and our garden is showing off all it’s beautiful colours because of it.

I recently found this lovely little sentence in a book by Wendelin van Draanen while I was working on my Soleil Quilt. It suited this feeling I had when I was painting the sun and dyeing all these yellow colours. It goes like this: ‘Then I began to notice how wonderful the breeze smelled. It smelled like…sunshine.’

Now that we are transitioning in high summer I enjoy the sunshine, swimming in the river and seeking for the soft cool breeze in the woods on days that it is really hot. Thank you for being here, I hope you enjoyed the photos.

x Claire

Golden Colour

may 2023

Our small world in the mountains is slowly changing. When early Spring was still cold and grey, nature is finally waking up. We see wild flowers in full bloom everywhere on our walks, the mountains are finally green again. The air is softly scented with gorse. I love this time of year!

There is a field in the middle of the forest not so far from our home. It is so beautiful right now because it is overgrown with wild flowers. There are so many colours and different flowers, which is so inspiring. I like to go there and bring my sketch book to draw up some sketches and ideas. Here and there I pick some flowers for my natural dye diary.

A while ago I experimented dyeing with onion skins, and I couldn’t be more happy with the deep golden colours. I thought I’d share my natural dye adventure with you.

The skins are high in tannin and because of this, the colour will bind to the fabric without the addition of any other ingredients or a mordant. Nothing so simple as to collect the onion skins at the bottom of the crate when you are on your local farmers market. You can collect yellow onion skins for rich yellow shades or red onion skins for shades of brown. You can mix them to expand your colour palette.

For this experiment I used equal parts onion skins to WOF. But you can also use half the weight of fibre to onion skins.

Add the onion skins to your dye pot and cover with enough water and leave overnight. The next day, bring slowly to a boil, then reduce to a low simmer for about 30 minutes to one hour. During the simmering the water will give a red colour. Then turn of the heat and leave it to cool. Strain out the onion skins by using a sieve and let the dye bath sit for one night.

Carefully place your prewashed and soaked linen into the dye pot and simmer gently for at least 30 minutes. To modify the colours you can add iron to the dye bath to have beautiful shades of green and grey mauve.

When you are happy with the colour you can remove the linen from the pot and rinse it with a pH-neutral soap and hang to dry.

Happy dyeing!

x Claire

Nuit Étoilée

april 2024

Our little hamlet has finally transitioned into a spring. The ancient chestnut forests higher up in the mountains are still in winter sleep, but the fruit trees in our garden are in full bloom.

When I started dyeing with indigo I just fell in love with the beautiful depth of blue shades that came out of the vat. I couldn’t believe how rich these shades were. In the back of my mind I had this idea to work with this natural dye a bit more from an illustrative persepective.

Holding these indigo dyed pieces of fabric always remind me of the night sky. We live secluded in the mountains which gives us the opportunity to have a clear view of the milky way. It is hard to not look up at night when I walk to dog before I go to sleep.

Normally when I start something new, I make sketches or browse through my sketch book for ideas. From there I start with the illustrations and turn them into a actual project. Painting the illustrations on the fabric, choosing the colours and finally the dye bath.

This time I let the beautiful shades of indigo lead me the way. I have always been very interested in the ancient science of the universe. I have this wonderful book with a eclectic collection of medieval illustrations of the universe, the stars, the sun. It describes the believes people had back then, when they looked up at the night sky, reading the stars, looking at the phases of the moon. I just felt I had to do something with this theme. And so this new natural dye adventure began…

A sweet poem by Rossetti before I say goodbye to you.

the sunrise wakes the lark to sing
the moonrise wakes the nightingale
come, darkness, moonrise, everything
that is so silent, sweet and pale:
come, so ye wake the nightingale