Natural Dyes, Weekend Intensive with Annie Egleson at Textile Center, NYC, Brooklyn location

This summer I attended the workshop at the Textile Center in Brooklyn, NY. I have been interested in natural dyes for a long time and finally had an opportunity to take a workshop. Annie was a wonderful instructor and I enjoyed meeting and working with the people in my class. As a teacher, I value the experience of being a student.  I learned so much not only about natural dyes, but about how other artists approach their work.

Getting organized.

Scouring to remove sizing and additives.

After scouring, rinse all fabrics.

Hollyhocks (violet) and Walnut (brown).

Madder (red).

Hollyhock in the pot.  Next step is to strain out the plants so we can put our fabric in .

Fabric coming out of the hollyhock dye bath.  We let dye bath sit overnight.

Fabric coming out of the madder pot. 

A collection of everyone's fabrics, color coded!

Detail shot of the walnut brown.

Detail of the hollyhock.

Detail of the chamomile.

Detail of the madder.

This next project was a silk bundle.  We selected leaves and flowers to wrap in the silk.

Making the package.

 The package of flowers were wrapped around a stick and boiled.   This image is after the boiling.

Leaves and flowers still inside silk.  Coming soon, an image of the silk with plants removed and dry.

Making bundles.  This was a process I had heard of, but always forget to do it when I am in my studio.
Stitching items inside the fabric, sewing gathered stitches and wrapping fabric around objects will
produce interesting patterns once removed from a dye bath.  You can see results below.

Indigo!  Bundled fabrics getting ready for a dip.

Coming out of the indigo dye.

Oxidizing.  First appearance is green.  

After rinsing, hanging to dry.

Some more examples.

Samples from my classmates.

Samples from my classmates.

Rather than toss a dye bath, we did a second bath with each color.
Of course, the color was not as intense, but still really nice results.