Vivienne Richmond is a natural dyer and textile historian based in East Sussex. Early last month, Chris and I visited her garden dye studio to learn about the process of creating botaniq plant dyed yarns.

I’ve been excited about botaniq yarns ever since I first met Vivienne and she showed me a few skeins and suggested putting together some crochet kits featuring them. Fast forward to October and she’s invited us to her garden to finalise the details and see how she works. We’ve jumped at the chance to experience the dyeing process firsthand.

Vivienne greets us at the door and leads us through to the living room. Laid out on the table are skeins of Botaniq in a gorgeous array of shades: deep reds, earthy clays and coppers, vibrant yellows and clear blues. I’m struck by the range and the richness of the colours, and how well they complement each other. After one of the wettest weeks of the year, today the sun is shining in across the table and highlighting the beautiful lustre of the yarn.

As we sip tea and wait for the dye baths to reach the correct temperature, Vivienne explains that she uses three types of dyestuff for botaniq: foraged, grown in her garden or bought as dried extract. As far as possible everything is sourced locally, or from within the UK, and absolutely no animal products are used. This means the true reds that can be achieved with insect-derived cochineal and lac are both out, along with oak gall mordants (as there is a slight chance that the grub might remain in the gall). Today she will be dyeing with chamomile, from her garden, and madder. She also has an indigo vat on the go, which is nearing the end of its life, but we might still be able to see it in action.

The fibre base that gives botaniq its unique silky character is Tencel, which is a brand of Lyocell produced by Austrian chemical company Lenzig AG. It’s a cellulose based fibre derived from responsibly sourced wood pulp, usually eucalyptus, which grows quickly and requires much less water and fewer chemicals than cotton. Both the water and the solvent used in the production of Tencel are reused many times in a circular system, so there is little waste and the production process is fast, using less energy compared to the production of other man-made fibres. Being made from wood, Tencel it is also completely biodegradable. In terms of dyeing, it’s a resilient material which, unlike wool, doesn’t need to be heated and cooled slowly. This means that it can be put straight into a hot dye bath or rinsed in cold water without the risk of felting.

Undyed, the yarn is a pale cream colour and the first process that it goes through is scouring, which involves soaking it in washing soda and leaving it to cool overnight. Once scoured the yarn is bright white and ready to start its dyeing journey. Each skein is given a label, which will remain in place right through the process and on which Vivienne meticulously records the details of each stage.

After scouring, a mordant is applied to help dye adhere better to the fibre and improve colour and light fastness. Mordants are normally used in conjunction with tannins such as cutch (from the wood of the acacia catechu tree), myrobalan (a type of ground nut) or tara (from the pods of the caesalpinia spinosa tree). This choice is important as each of the different tannins will alter the shade of the yarn slightly, pushing it towards a subtle blush or green tone and thereby changing the final colour.

Mordanting and applying tannins normally requires soaking overnight, often over several days, so Vivienne will generally prepare a large batch of yarn in one go, ready to dye up as needed. The dyeing happens seasonally and, in early October, we are nearing the end of the window for this year. Before long it will be too cold and wet to work outside.

We make our way to the garden to check the temperature of the two large pots that are gently steaming on electric hobs under the kitchen window; they’re both ready to go. Today’s skeins of yarn are already out here too, soaking in a bucket of plain tap water (apparently the PH in this part of Hastings is 7, which is handy!).

First up is the madder bath. It has a bright pink froth on the surface, but the liquid below is a much deeper colour and smells rich and earthy. The skeins are wrung out, fluffed up and then lowered in, with their labels hanging over the side of the pot. The maximum number that Vivienne will dye in a single bath is five - she would rather have fewer than trying to cram them in, but the dye baths can be used over and over again until the colour is exhausted, producing a lighter shade each time.

As she prepares the second of the pots, Vivienne tells us she started with synthetic dyes, but after a friend sent her a copy of Danish indie dyers G-uld’s English Dye Book she was inspired to attend a week long natural dyeing course with G-uld in Denmark. The course focussed primarily on dyeing wool, but when she returned home she set about experimenting and adjusting the processes for plant based fibres.

The second dye pot contains the chopped stalks and leaves of chamomile, and it has now been simmering away for about an hour. All parts of the chamomile plant can be used, either fresh or dried, and it can even be left in the pot during the dyeing process. It does tend to get tangled into the yarn though, so Vivienne strains off the liquid and puts the vegetable matter straight into the compost.

I ask how the temperature of the dye bath affects the final colour and Vivienne jokes that she hated science at school, but really got into chemistry when glazing ceramics at art college. It’s clear that she really enjoys experimenting with different materials and tweaking all the variables in the dyeing process; as she says, the possibilities are endless.

Now that the skeins are steaming happily in their pots, we can move on to the indigo vat. Vivienne explains that, as it’s late in the year, this is an old indigo which has been revived and she’s not sure whether it will work. She’s placed a cotton thread in to check and now we gather round as she removes it to see if there’s a colour change. Happily, as the thread is exposed to the air it begins to change from green to blue. The indigo vat is working well enough to demonstrate dyeing a couple of skeins!

Indigo pigment is not soluble in water and so the process of indigo dyeing relies on removing oxygen so that the pigment can bond to the fibre. It’s important to put the yarn into the dye bath without introducing air. Rather than separating the skein out like she did with the other dyes, Vivienne presses it together as she lowers it gently in. Once it’s fully immersed she sets a timer for 15 minutes.

With saucepans on and the indigo bath in process, we head indoors to learn about how the yarn is finished. Straight from the dyeing process it is rinsed in water and if it’s dried at this point it can become a bit crunchy and sticky, tangling together easily. A quick dip in neutral detergent brings back its silkiness though, and then it can be gently air dried, which takes quite a long time as Tencel is very absorbent.

A pale pink skein is already set up on the yarn swift, clamped to a stool in a patch of sunlight by the window. Vivienne counts under her breath as she winds it onto a niddy noddy. Once she has counted out the correct length (plus a little over) the skein and its dyeing label are taken back to the table, and the information is handwritten onto a paper band.

Vivienne wraps a sample of each skein around a card and files it away in her dye folder, then places a second sample in the window to check for lightfastness. All her yarn is checked like this: left in sunlight for a period of time to see if it fades and then graded from 1-3. Only the skeins that achieve grade 1 are used.

One of the alarms beeps, indicating that it’s time to remove the skeins from the madder bath. When the yarn emerges I’m quite surprised at the bright red colour it has turned. It’s dunked straight into a bath of cold water and Vivienne explains that the colour will soften a lot once the yarn has been rinsed and dried.

We head back up to the garden to have a look at how the indigo bath is doing. After the yarn is removed from the vat, squeezed out over a bucket and rinsed in water, it is held up to oxygenate. It starts off a green colour, and then, just like the piece of cotton, it begins to turn dark blue. We dash to the end of the garden to avoid the spray as Vivienne swings it around to remove the water and allow the air through.

By now it’s getting close to lunchtime and before we head off I perch on the sofa to have a final chat with Vivienne. I ask what she’s doing for the rest of the day and she smiles and says she’ll be playing with more dyes this afternoon. We discuss how the organisation and thorough record keeping that she learned on the G-uld course have laid the foundation for a much more experimental practice: having a really firm and well-tested framework allows her plenty of room for creativity and play. And the outcome is truly something special.