Thursday, May 21, 2009

Students teaching me new dying tricks

I have my dye studio open and a pot of comfrey presoaking, waiting for the fabric. Comfrey is an medicinal herb and it is suppose to give a green dye color, we'll see. This is my friend Windi, a couple of summers ago I had a dye class and taught her and her friends natural dying. Now, she leading her own dying class for her Renaissance (Kings, Queens, Knights and castles etc.) group. She came over and we went into our woods collecting plants to dye with. Here she's holding wild onions for the kids in the group to taste test (she also heads up the children's craft group.


The fiddle heads ferns are beautiful, she picked a few a those to try.

We've had a nice raining spring and the creek was overflowing it's banks. I love to see the sunlight coming threw the woods on the water.
I couldn't resist showing another picture.


These are a few of her class samples. The indigo is linen, it was beautiful. I think I'm going to try playing with linen some day. How easy is it to make a linen quilt? The rest are wool.
Windi is a very creative person (this picture I took a couple of years ago when I was teaching the class, I don't know why it uploaded so small). She is dying several yards of wool here to make into a cloak and wanted different color bands. She rigged up this rack and has the stove and dye pot underneath the fabric. She's dying it with cochineal.


Her fabric is drying on the right. The other fabric is Becky's, she tied hers to achieve different designs. Hers also was made into a cloak. You can see Windi's has a wide white band yet. The next day we dyed it with indigo.



This is Windi now, modeling her finished cloak, she is quite clever! My lilacs are beautiful this year.





1 comment:

Deb Hardman said...

So I've been replaced! ;~D

It looks like fun. Windi's cloak turned out lovely. I wish I could come play with you!

I think the fiddleheads are a little too far along for eating. They should be picked smaller & tight to be good & tender. The woods look so inviting.

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