Liz Spencer is making a difference by educating people about growing and harvesting natural colours. Gauri D. writes about this beautiful initiative surrounded by homegrown flowers inspired by Liz’s work.
As spring and summer rolls in, so do the floral prints and bright colours. The diaspora of fashion celebrates nature in its own unique way. Most mainstream designs use man made dyes to paint on the floral motifs that shine bright in sunlight. But Liz Spencer found a sustainable and fun way to create her own dyes.
It’s said that earth smiles in flowers. Liz Spencer makes Earth and the Earthlings smile with her bright and beautiful colours, all sourced from natural sources.
The Dogwood Dyer – Liz Spencer
Liz Spencer is a gardener, a dyer, a mother, and an eco-conscious woman. She grows her own garden as a source of her natural dyes. A year long blooming garden with great potential for humans and pollinators alike.
Liz started a garden when she was in London studying fashion and sustainability. Her college gave her an opportunity to plant a dye garden. A garden where plants are cultivated for their colour potential. This experience enamoured her into growing a personal dye garden and extracting various colours from vegan sources.
Liz says, “There is seemingly unlimited knowledge and potential for education of chemistry and botany in this venture.”
Liz Spencer has an Instagram following of over 250k followers on Instagram. She offers online workshops, tutorials, dye kits, and seeds to everyone who is interested in learning the art. She charges a small amount to her subscribers interested in starting their own dynamic dye garden.
Choosing the Natural Ingredients
When asked what are her ingredients for making the natural dyes, Liz said:
“Fresh and dried flowers are my main ingredients for making natural colours. I prefer to use flowers grown in my garden, but I occasionally also choose dried flowers of natural extracts to make a dye. I use flowers, leaves, bark, and sometimes even roots and seeds to make colours. Some colours are rare in nature and come from a particular family of plants. A bright and true red, for example, is very challenging to find. There aren’t too many options for red.”
Liz says dyed silk or wool from blended fresh indigo leaves gives a beautiful turquoise/ teal colour that is unlike any other. It is a very special natural ingredient that Liz enjoys growing in her garden. The beautiful natural colour brings joy and happiness.
The Colourful Road Ahead for Liz Spencer
Liz has used natural dyes and colours for a long time and plans on continuing her work for the foreseeable future. In her many years of experimenting, she has also extracted a beautiful red colour from the Brazil wood shavings. Liz has extracted natural pink hair dye from Cochineal and made oil pastors from naturally extracted colours.
She shares videos with her daughter hammer printing the flower dyes on clothes. If earth truly does smile in flowers, mother nature has been smiling down upon Liz Spencer and shall continue to do so.
Food for thought
In recent news, the movie Barbie used so much pink colour that there has been a global shortage of the colour pink. As this news flashes across social media platforms, mind wonders. Instead of buying harmful chemical colours, wouldn’t the beauty and fashion industry gain much appreciation and satisfaction in growing and harvesting these cheerful natural colours?
