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Best places to naturally dye your silk Sabina Motasem wedding dress
My instagram feed seems to be flooded with loads of natural dyeing posts lately. This is great if you just so happen to be creatively and craft minded, but what if you’re not? Can you upcycle your dress so it can go way beyond the wedding day? Where can you go to have your dress dyed without it harming the environment or the dress? Is there another way?
Yes there is, it's called Natural Dyeing which use dyes created from foraged plants and food waste, like madder, avocado, pomegranate and marigold, to create amazing colours. They are so much kinder to the environment and to the delicate silks our dresses are made from.
We’ve scoured the UK to bring you FOUR great places brides can go to naturally dye their silk Sabina Motasem wedding dress. Read on…
So What is Natural Dyeing?
So you're probably asking what's the difference between natural dyeing and traditional dyeing?
Since we started dressing timelessly chic brides over 16 years ago, we have always been asked by brides if our dresses can be dyed and we've always had to say, NO, it's not a good idea for various reasons. The main one being that usual traditional methods involves the use of harmful dye chemicals which are terrible for the environment and often requires extremely high temperatures which causes unpredictable shrinkage rates for the outer and lining silk layers of fabric in a dress. All sorts of distortion would occur and could damage the dress.
We believe perhaps tinting the dress a soft colour at a low temperature would be a great option with the additional optional eco-printing of hammering flowers embellisment as an extra detail.
Studio Kühü, Camden London
Studio Kühü is a natural dye house in London, just close to Euston in the Camden area, They use flowers and organics that are donated locally by their corner shops and Garden Centres. Instead of throwing them away, they gather and preserve them for their dyes.
Mariana Leyva is a skilled fashion designer and textile artist. Mariana's connection with plants and flowers has always been very personal and special. Since she was a child and helped her 'Mama and Abuela' in the kitchen, she learnt the properties of herbs and plants used for cooking and healing ‘los males’ – the ailments, also great for revamping clothes with Mexican marigold 'cempasuchil' and avocado pits.
They also have a selection of our signature silk crepe and plant silk swatches which have been test dyed too. They also run dyeing workshops too!
For more information go to https://www.studiokuhu.com/
Ceres Studio 1, Brixton London
Ceres Studio 1 was founded by Lara Mantell and Florence Hawkins. They are London based artists specialising in hand printed textile design on natural fibres.
Their light filled studio, above the vibrant streets of Brixton, has a custom-made print-table and a cornucopia of natural dyes. They are modern alchemists, who experiment making colour for silk-screen printing from local and sustainable sources. They design, research, and collaborate on projects; harnessing and utilising their extensive knowledge, in layers and intersections of colour and pattern.
They run dyeing and printing workshops and they can also take on commissions too. Contact them for a consultation if you’d like to dye your Sabina Motasem dress. They have a selection of our signature silk crepe swatches which have been test dyed and printed different colours too.
Below are some of the examples of our silk swatches Ceres have tested dyed and printed.
For more information go to https://ceresstudio1.com/
Botanical Inks, Bristol
Botanical Inks is a natural dye house, based in Bristol, South West England and founded by Babs Behen offers garment dyeing and can work with low temperatures for delicate silks which our dresses are made from.
Babs is a natural dyer, an author, a Tedx Speaker and a specialist of non-toxic natural dyeing, inks, printmaking and bioregional regenerative textile systems.
They use wildcrafted plants, organic garden produce and recycled food and farm waste, for making dyes and inks along with various responsibly sourced extracts. Food-grade starches, oils and egg are used to make printing mediums, and reclaimed objects for Shibori tie-dying.
Watch Babs’ TedX Bath talk here.
For more information go to https://www.botanicalinks.com/
Mia Sylvia, Saffron Walden, Essex
Mia Sylvia is an internationally acclaimed and award winning fine art textile designer, artist and educator. Mia specialises in the world of natural dyes. Each dye is hand made from ingredients such as plants, flowers, food waste and scrap metals. As an artist, Mia curates sculptural textile centrepieces, ethereal fabric installations, bespoke hand and plant dyed napkins, table runners, and ribbons and wedding dresses.I
As a botanical dye specialist who works with everything from foraged flowers and foliage to food waste, spices and rusted metal, Mia creates unique, beautiful textiles that are natural one-offs. Everything she uses is either found or foraged and regenerative and she works closely with you to create something individual.
Mia has exhibited her artworks twice at the Tate Modern, been interviewed and recognised by the creative team at Instagram, designed installations at SKETCH, Selfridges and curated elevated art pieces for London Fashion Week.
All dyes are handmade in the studio and are 100% natural and organic.
For more information go to https://www.miasylvia.co.uk/garment-regeneration
Rebecca Desnos, Online Dyeing Workshops
If you’d like to find out more about the world of natural dyeing, this is a great insta account that’s worth a follow! We found so many amazing creative ideas and learnt so much about natural dyes from Rebecca Desnos's blog and insta-feed. She's a writer and natural dyer who's written four books on this subject and runs special workshops and courses, and has lots of tips on her instagram page. Such an interesting read and worth a follow!
For more information go to https://rebeccadesnos.com/
We wrote a blog post on some of the creative things you can do with dyeing and eco-printing with flowers. Here’s the link to our previous blog post.
https://www.sabinamotasem.com/blogs/news/everything-you-need-to-know-about-dyeing-your-wedding-dress
A Few Things To Think About Before Dyeing Your Wedding Dress...
Before dyeing your dress and especially on something as precious as your wedding dress here are a few things to carefully consider:
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Always test things out on leftover fabric beforehand. Some of the dyers we’ve recommended have been sent some of our signature silk swatches to test dye and experiment with, Ask to see those before dyeing your dress. We would be happy to supply some of the off-cuts and leftover fabrics if you would like to test dye with any of the above natural dyers.
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Any kind of dye with water may change the texture, the softness and handle of the silk fabric slightly, which cannot be reversed.
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Make sure you are absolutely sure you want to dye your dress, once you've dyed the dress there’s no way you can change it back.
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Don't dry clean your dress before dyeing, the dry cleaning chemicals could prevent dye uptake.
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If you're looking for a strong dark, intense rich colour, this method definitely not for you.
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Natural dyes give soft subtle organic colours and in places it might be a little uneven.
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Always stick to light shades at low temperatures which is best for delicate silks. It might be best to go for a TINT rather than full colour, with something like pomegranate or avocado for subtle gold and soft blush shades, or black tea leaves
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Consider eco-printing embellishment techniques such as hammering flowers, but make sure you do a test before doing it on the actual dress
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If you’re naturally dyeing yourself at home, first attempts can be disappointing, so make sure you take time to practice first or test dye on initial fabric.
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There might still be a tiny bit of shrinkage even dyeing at low temperatures, if your dress is a very snug fit with a lot less draped loosenes in it, this might not be for you.
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Please note dyeing your dress is not a service we offer. If you wish to do so, you should approach an experienced natural dye house directly.
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