Grow, Cook, Dye, Wear: From Seed to Style the Sustainable Way

Product Information

Introducing Grow, Cook, Dye, Wear– a fully-illustrated guide that explains how to follow a completely sustainable approach to both food and fashion, by combining the two to achieve self-sufficiency in style!

The challenge – and the joy – of plant dyeing is to learn it well. "There is a lot of diversity among contemporary natural dyers, but what unites us is a love of colour and a taste for alchemy," reflects Susan Dye. "Using a pile of unremarkable dried weld leaves to create a hank of electric-yellow yarn never ceases to give me a thrill. Dyeing requires a satisfying attention to both science and art. Whether consciously or not, successful natural dyers are masters of chemistry and biology. We learn how to extract dye molecules from plants and bind them to fibres. And in all kinds of processes, it's important to control temperature, alkalinity, acidity." Once the fabric is mordanted, it’s ready to be dyed. But there are also modifiers and mixers that come into play. ‘Mixers’ is a term that I’ve coined. I use it to refer to certain traditional dye plants that I incorporate into the dye bath to add color. For example, madder – it can be harvested only three to five years after growing and the roots are used to obtain the dye. Modifiers are interesting because when you dye something, it is very rare to get two identical results. There are so many factors that influence color. One of them is pH level in water – modifiers like lemon help intentionally change the pH level and so a murky brown can become pink. AS: What are the considerations in writing down a dye recipe? From sowing to sewing, Bella guides you with engaging stories, easy-to-follow instructions, step-by-step illustrations, and full-scale pattern sheets. BG: What is to stress is that it’s not an activity that you need to be engaged in the whole day. There is a process of preparing a fabric. If it’s a new fabric from the store, what I call a virgin textile in my book – it needs to be rewashed first. Though working with upcycled fabric is efficient, because natural dyes work great in obscuring stains.

Swap food waste and fast fashion for homegrown produce, delicious vegan dishes, and a contemporary capsule wardrobe with the help of fashion designer, dressmaker, and writer Bella Gonshorovitz. Who’s the author? Bella Gonshorovitz is a prize-winning fashion designer and dressmaker who has worked with Alexander Wang and Gucci. A long-time vegan, Bella is passionate about growing her own food and reducing waste. Her cooking is influenced by the principles of sustainability as well as by the flavours of her Tel Aviv childhood.

Whether you’re looking to rethink your lifestyle, embrace slow fashion, try a plant-based diet or simply give growing your own produce a go, Bella’s friendly, accessible approach to sustainable living will help you get started, create more and waste less. I encourage readers to approach the book at their own pace. Maybe you’ll just grow onions and make recipes, maybe you’ll save skins from store bought onions when you cook the recipes and dye fabrics or maybe you’ll just upcycle fabric and make your own dress using the patterns. The whole process is slow in itself. You start with the onion, perhaps in spring and harvest in autumn, cook with it, collect enough skins to dye the fabric and make the dress over winter so it’s ready to wear next spring. AS: What is the circular economy of soil? Stretchy cotton clothing cut into thin strips is great to use in the garden instead of twine or wire. Transform your fabrics into five exclusively designed, essential pieces, including a shirt dress and duster coat.Over the last couple of workshops I’ve conducted, I used the same pot of water and the same amount of onions, but one created a yellow dye the other olive – It’s an uncontrollable process. Bella: [The book] is for anyone who enjoys doing things with their hands. The book doesn't ask you for expensive ingredients or special knowledge. It's about doing quite a lot with very little, with a real emphasis on upcycling and working with what’s already there, whether that’s an old sheet or tablecloth. Transform your fabrics into five exclusively-designed essential pieces, including a shirt dress and duster coat.

Live sustainably with style – grow fruits and vegetables, cook them, create natural dyes, then make your own clothes with five full-size pattern sheets.A strong part of why I wanted to design in the first place, why I wanted to make clothes, was [to look at] how clothes become memory. I wear things for decades. Even if they don't fit anymore, I find a way to adjust them. I can't let go of things and if something gets lost, I’m devastated. When fast fashion became so big, I was just staggered that people could buy something and then just throw it away. Clothes are imbued with what you had with the garment. From sowing to sewing, Bella guides you with engaging stories, easy-to-follow instructions, step-by-step illustrations, and full-scale pattern sheets, as well as:

You have to have a willingness to engage. You might just cook a couple of recipes or you might experiment with dying. You need to be open to investing time. That's the most expensive ingredient in the book: time.Bella: I had the title ‘Grow, Cook, Dye’ in my head and thought ‘what am I going to do with it?’ I was growing vegetables in my allotment and working with natural dyes. And, at the same time, I started making artwork with a client of mine, an artist called Cathie Pilkington. And I just started connecting the dots between growing things and cooking things and dyeing clothing. Transform your fabrics into five exclusively designed, essential pieces of clothing, including a shirt dress and duster coat Bel: After a degree in fashion design at the Instituto Marangoni, working for threeASFOUR and Alexander Wang in New York, you studied Innovative Pattern Cutting as a postgraduate at Central Saint Martins and gained an MA in Applied Psychology in Fashion at LCF. Tell me about your journey from that point. The aim here isn’t for readers to grow all of their vegetables, hand make all clothes, or even convert to a strict vegan diet. It is about establishing a more intimate connection with nature and finding a new perspective on mass-produced products. With clothes, as with vegetables, the end product is often presented in a manner detached from its origins and it’s too easy to forget that everything we eat, consume and wear comes from nature. AS: What is the elaborated concept of garden to garment? BG: My tentative dye ‘recipes’ are for 100g of fabric. It is hard to write down a dye recipe; from one day to the next so many things can change, affecting the shade of dye obtained. It may vary depending on the fabric, water pH level, time in the foraging season, the freshness and quality of the crop etc. The reason recipes are included in the book is to show people a tentative spectrum of colors they can achieve.