TUTOR: OK, Jim. You wanted to see me about your textile design project.

JIM: That’s right. I’ve been looking at how a range of natural dyes can be used to colour fabrics like cotton and wool.

TUTOR: Why did you choose that topic?

JIM: Well, I got a lot of useful ideas from the museum, you know, at that exhibition of textiles. But I’ve always been interested in anything to do with colour. Years ago, I went to a carpet shop with my parents when we were on holiday in Turkey, and I remember all the amazing colours.

TUTOR: They might not all have been natural dyes.

JIM: Maybe not, but for the project I decided to follow it up. And I found a great book about a botanic garden in California that specialises in plants used for dyes.

TUTOR: OK. So, in your project, you had to include a practical investigation.

JIM: Yeah. At first I couldn’t decide on my variables. I was going to just look at one type of fibre for example, like cotton …

TUTOR: … and see how different types of dyes affected it?

JIM: Yes. Then I decided to include others as well, so I looked at cotton and wool and nylon.

TUTOR: With just one type of dye?

JIM: Various types, including some that weren’t natural, for comparison.

TUTOR: OK.

JIM: So, I did the experiments last week. I used some ready-made natural dyes. I found a website which supplied them, they came in just a few days, but I also made some of my own.

TUTOR: That must have taken quite a bit of time.

JIM: Yes, I’d thought it’d just be a matter of a teaspoon or so of dye, and actually that wasn’t the case at all. Like I was using one vegetable, beetroot, for a red dye, and I had to chop up a whole pile of it. So it all took longer than I’d expected.

TUTOR: One possibility is to use food colourings.

JIM: I did use one. That was a yellow dye, an artificial one.

TUTOR: Tartrazine?

JIM: Yeah. I used it on cotton first. It came out a great colour, but when I rinsed the material, the colour just washed away. I’d been going to try it out on nylon, but I abandoned that idea.

TUTOR: Were you worried about health issues?

JIM: I’d thought if it’s a legal food colouring, it must be safe.

TUTOR: Well, it can occasionally cause allergic reactions, I believe.