This weekend workshop is a fun hands-on adventure experimenting with Nature's beauty of natural pigments. We are surrounded in our every day environment with plants that can give us a rich colour palette we can use for dyeing, even painting. Even if you have never worked with fabric or don't consider yourself a craft artist, this is a project with quick rewards and stunning beauty.
We will be gathering dye stuffs from nature as well as from the kitchen, extracting pigments, learning about color fastness (mordanting) and dyeing silk scarves with various shades of natural dyes. We will also experiment with painting the pigments on rice paper. Everyone will take home a beautiful scarf, a painting, an instruction booklet and fond memories.
Natural Dyes for Spinners, Weavers, and Basketmakers.
This workshop is specifically geared towards the craft artist, the weaver, knitter, spinner, or basketmaker. We will be dyeing all types of natural fiber yarns such as wool, silk, cotton, linen, sisal, jute, and reed. We will learn different dyeing techniques on animal fiber verses plant fiber.
This workshop includes: a weed walk - identification and gathering of dye plants
extraction of pigments from gathered plants
mordanting techniques for animal and plant fibers
dye techniques such as 'rainbow dyeing in the grease', under dyes and over dyes
ancient dye recipes
We will be focusing on sample dyeing rather than bulk dyeing, so please bring various sample materials and a notebook for documentation.
Painting with Natural Dyes
If you love water colors, why not try painting with natural dyes? The workshop concentrates on gathering dye mateirals from nature and extracting their pigment. Color fastness is achieved by adding a mordant. By using concentrated dye extracts we will color rice papers through painting, sponging, dipping, and soaking techniques.
Bring your experiential creativity and have some fun!
Papermaking with Natural Dyes
Natural dyes are organic, biodegradable, and blend harmoniously with each other. Beginning with a nature walk, we will identify and collect natural dye materials from the surrounding area. After we have accumulated an abundance of berries, barks, roots, flowers, and other organic matter, we will learn how to extract their brilliant colors and use them to dye paper pulps. We will explore the beautiful array of colors that can be achieved by dyeing different paper fibers including cotton, abaca, and flax, as well as the textures created by the inclusion of dye pulps. A basic knowledge of papermaking is helpful.
