© Marilyn Caddell

I learnt to spin in 1976 and very soon became interested in the use of natural dyes to colour my yarn.  The lovely range of soft colours obtained from plant material - flower heads, leaves, nuts, bark, berries, etc. - are so much nicer than the harsher commercial dyes. In 1990 I attended a lecture given by Hjordis Hall Andersen, a Danish Mycologist, about the use of certain species of fungi as a source of dye pigment.  The possibility to do this had been discovered in the early 1970's by an American artist called Miriam Rice, who lived in Mendicino in California.  She had always collected edible mushrooms and had a pot cooking one day when she noticed that the liquid was a lovely colour and thought to put a skein of wool in the pot.  Bingo!  Fungi Dyeing was born. 

She experimented with all the fungi in her area and shared her results with a Swedish friend, who took the message back to Scandinavia.  We didn't hear about it until Hjordis gave her talk at an annual spinning event near Perth in 1990.  Her slides were amazing and we were "hooked". The whole colour spectrum is possible - vibrant red, pink, orange, gold, purple, green and brown.  Blue is possible, but not so easy. The fungi must be collected in the autumn, so for use throughout the year, they must be dried or frozen (taking care to label VERY well before putting in the freezer.  Cooking the wrong packet could be disastrous!) To obtain the dye, the fungi are simmered for one hour, like a stew, then strained to obtain the liquid.  Some species contain so much colour pigment that they can be cooked again for a second and even third time.  Each dyebath can be used several times to obtain slightly paler shades.  By altering the PH of the water used - adding vinegar to make it more acidic, or ammonia to make it more alkaline - colour changes can occur.  Orange becomes rosy pink, orange - brown, red - bronze, purple - silver grey, etc.  The addition of iron or tin crystals at the end of the dyeing can also change the colour.

This cushion was made for the exhibition at the 10th Fungi and Fibre Symposium, held at Rovaniemi in Finland in 2001.  I wanted to make something was fun to do and showed the range of colours that can be produced from fungi.  The fabric has a course weave, which I could use as a canvas for the embroidery.  All the yarns - both commercial and handspun - are dyed with mushrooms or bracket fungi that grow on tree stumps or branches. The reds and oranges come from the Cortinarius species - small brown mushrooms that grow up through moss and needles under fir trees.  The purple comes from Hapalopilus nidulans, a cork brown bracket fungus found on deciduous trees, mainly rowan, oak and birch - you have to know to add ammonia to release the purple dye.  Greens and golds come from Phaeolus schweinitzii - a large rosette shaped fungus that grows at the base of big, old fir trees, or Inonotus hispidus, a large bracket found on ash trees.  Brown is from Pisolithus arhizus - a puffball type fungus on the ground. The scraps of dyed woollen fabric, used for the figures, were left over from a double bed quilt that was made to take to the 1997 symposium held in USA.  The crochet braid around the cushion was made using several strands of dyed yarn together.  I really enjoyed making the cushion and my only regret is that I didn't take a note of the number of stitches involved - it would be interesting to know how many thousands there are!