Ake Ake Shrouds

20/11/2025

It may not make riveting content, but mordanting cloth is a really important step in dyeing fabric. Applying mordant creates a bridge between dye and fibres to ensure longevity and brightness of colours. It's especially used for cellulose fabrics like cotton and linen. I use several recipes, all involve natural mineral salts so are earth friendly.

These pieces are mordanted and ready to dye for a special workshop in botanical print next week. I'll be taking my studio on the road to Mercy Hospice, working with the beautiful team of and whānau to create keepsake pieces and lasting memories.

18/11/2025

Join us for our next Coffee n Coffins Chat, where we’ll be taking a deeper, more conversational look at Limited Tenure Plots.

Following the strong interest and great discussion from our last Limited Tenure Webinar, we’re bringing the conversation back, this time in a round table format. This is your opportunity to ask questions, share insights, and hear from others across the sector who are actively navigating the challenges and opportunities of limited tenure.

Our panelists are being finalised currently with more information made available here once confirmed.

We’ll be exploring how limited tenure can support future cemetery planning, what lessons are being learned across Aotearoa, and how it can help address capacity challenges.

Even if you can’t make it live, register anyway, everyone who registers will receive a link to the recording afterwards.

If you’re running out of room in your cemeteries or planning to open new land, this is a discussion you’ll want to be part of.

14/11/2025

Plant dyed burial cloth, the view from inside. There's something about this that evokes thoughts about birthing? Do you see it? The two phases of life, the beginning and the end, are a lot alike really. Both are a transition, a release of forces and a time to envelope the body in warmth and love. Both require a tremendous amount of energy to seperate. One, the baby from the womb, The other, the soul from the physical.

13/11/2025

Wonderful Wild Carrot (Daucus carota) giving a delicious green on linen and silk. Wild carrot is in abundance on the roadside and paddocks in spring. Most consider it a w**d but it's far from that. Not only is it a fabulous dye source but it is also entirely edible, tasting unsurprisingly like carrot. Farmers don't love it because the base gets too woody to mow, so I find they are only too happy to let you harvest if you ask. Be careful you don't confuse it with Hemlock which is poisonous. After all we witches want to dye, not die. Wild Carrot, or Queen Anne's Lace, has hairy stems, smells carroty and has a small dark dot in the centre of the flower.

**ds **ds

12/11/2025

Burial shroud, freshly dyed, getting it's first rinse in the rain. A cleansing of sorts.

10/11/2025

The Coffinmaker, a short documentary by filmmaker , gives us insight into the work and thoughts of craftsman Marcus Daley. It's not a new movie, perhaps you've seen it, but it's meaning does not age. Daley's words are powerful, they resonate with me no matter how many times I listen. It's a musing on the burden of carrying the dead, be it in a coffin or on a shrouding board, and on mortality.

10/11/2025

Natural Burials are now available to the community in Wairarapa!

We're delighted to welcome Wairarapa Funeral Services to the large family of certified Funeral Directors providing natural burials across the country. https://www.naturalburials.co.nz/funeral-directors/wairarapa-funerals-now-certified/

03/11/2025

Just saying, it would avoid a lot of stress.

Photo credit

31/10/2025

25/10/2025

I gotta say that sometimes the struggles of being a smalltime maker swimming against the tide of a very powerful industry are very real. That's why every wāhine business owner needs things like a pair of octopus therapy pants and the company of non judgemental chickens to remind herself, power comes from the weirdest of places.

Not gonna dwell on the negatives, just gonna keep swimming.