Summer Solstice

Once Upon a Time there was a girl who admired the power of nature and she was deeply convinced that finding the harmony with the natural environment was the secret for a peaceful and mindful life.

In 2019, following her Herbology course, she developed an interest to the dyeing power of plants. So she got information from Michel Garcia, Aurélia Wolff and Rebecca Desnos’s Books. She particularly liked the approach of Rebecca Desnos’s and it helps her to go for this adventure.

In 2020 she tested different pigments extracted from plants like, for example, onion skin, avocado skin, turmeric, Rooibos tea. Cooking waste is easy to get and free, they are good starting material. These basics plants offer pretty colours and for her, there was a kind of magic in the natural dyeing. The discovering of this new technic was a source of joy and inspiration to her.

Here are the plants she tried : - yellow onion, - red onion, - daffodils, - turmeric, - avocado skin and stone, - heather, - black tea, - Rooibos tea, - gorse flower, - rose flower, - nettle, - alder cone, - willow leaves, - horsetail.

Maybe you are surprised about this list ? Well, she was too. Following the advice she read in books, she followed her instinct when she tried some plants. Natural dyeing is a huge world and requires years and years of tests to explore all aspects.

Very satisfied and encouraged by her experiences of dyeing cloths, she decided to explore another material : the cotton rope.

She used white cotton rope to made baskets of different sizes and shapes and was curious to combine these two material : dye and rope. As soon as she got the idea, she rushed to try it out in her kitchen and it was a success. The dyeing magic had acted again.

After this, she dyed again and again leftover ropes and sewn again and again a new design of basket following only her instinct. They were all different but in a way identical in what she felt about them. They were as bright as the sun. Every-time, the effect was the same, the circular design reminded her the brightness and the lightness provided by the sun. So naturally she named them the Summer Solstice Basket, after the longest day of the year, when the sun doesn’t stop to shine in the far north of our hemisphere.