I’ve spent the last three Mondays taking a natural dye class at Bluebird Dye Gardens with Laurie Hall. The class was specifically about shibori and we practiced various forms of it. It was wildly fun and I’d do the whole thing over in a heartbeat. We spent some time in her huge dye garden to get a feel for the work that goes into producing those marvelous dye plants. It also just gave us a moment to get our hands in the dirt. Laurie grows a wide variety of flowers and has a healthy madder bed.
If it isn’t obvious, I think it is definitely true that natural dyeing is far more complicated than the synthetic dyeing I do in my work. There are so many details with natural dyeing and things change with every plant and fiber being dyed. This post is full of pictures and I don’t even know all the names of the dye plants much less the details about the chemistry.
What I do know is that we mordanted the things we wanted to dye on the first two Mondays. The first Monday we used a tannin (oak gall) as a pre-mordant and then some form of alum as the mordant. The second Monday we did a one-step mordant of aluminum acetate.
We spent part of the first two weeks doing 5 different samples of techniques: Arashi, Ori Nui, Maki-agi, Mokume, and Itajime. Those are forms of resist created by stitching, wrapping, and shaped resist. We used fabric that Laurie had mordanted for us so we could start right in. Then as those small samples were in the dye baths, we worked on textiles we had brought using the techniques we were learning.
Class samples of five different techniques. The red hearts top right on silk were a separate project by Mary Vozar.
Laurie has an absolutely marvelous dye shed. It has a couple big work tables and a protected corner for the pots. Her farm is at the top of a hill overlooking Mesa Verde, Ute Mountain, and the La Platas. We had the joy of watching thunderstorms form over the La Platas and wash toward us. We had a couple rain storms while we were working and it was marvelous to feel the rain coming down and soaking into the earth.
The class busy stitching on the first day of the workshop
It takes a tremendous amount of plant matter to dye textiles. Some plants require a 1:1 WOG to dye plant ratio. Some are stronger and require less, but it still means you have to grow a LOT of flowers to get a strong color.
Three burners with our pots for the day. The PVC pipes sticking out of the pots have fabric wrapped around them that is being dyed.
I think this is Sulphur Cosmos
Stitching the Ori Nui teeth pattern on the first day of the workshop. Ready for the dye pot after a soak.
Stitched shibori has the ability to make really fascinating effects. I loved the simplest of patterns created with one line of stitching through a fold in the cloth. You then pull the stitching tight which creates a resist. This creates a pattern called Ori Nui or teeth.
The Ori Nui teeth pattern is to the left dyed in scabiosa. The example to the right is Mokume (wood grain) dyed in madder.
This scarf was dyed with the Ori Nui technique dyed in Jet Black Hollyhock.
Ori Nui teeth pattern stitched on cotton dyed in jet black hollyhock
One of my classmates was also Laurie’s assistant, Lau. She brought her mom to one of the classes and I was astounded at how quickly her artist self just created marvelous things without prior experience in these techniques. Lau clearly learned this artistic leaning from her mom because her work was beautiful.
Lau brought her mom one week who was clearly a natural. She just whipped out this stitched and wrapped piece quietly at the end of the table.
Lau and one of her pole wrapped pieces dyed most likely in coreopsis
I had a lot of fun playing with various resists with wrapped shibori. For example, for this one I used two ball jar outer rings bound quite tightly. The dye could penetrate the center but not the circles and I was pleased how it turned out. The magic of the whole process is when you unwrap things. With natural dyes especially, I had no ability to predict with any certainty what would happen. With experience I think you get better at this, but I thought this circle resist would be a bust and yet, it was surprisingly interesting! The dark circles at the top I believe was rust from the lids.
Using ball jar rings for resist.
Finished textile. photo credit Laurie Hall
Another resist dyed piece using a square block is below. Laurie Hall had done a piece like this where she had inserted pressed flowers between the layers of fabric and then between the blocks and I wanted to try it. The results were quite fun! The central colors are flowers and the whole thing was pressed between two square wooden blocks and tied tightly. You can see the resist lines the string makes in the brown edges of the square. This was dyed in coreopsis.
Resist dye with eco print flowers
Getting the effects we wanted did mean struggling a bit with materials. Mary was wrapping a large silk piece on this PVC pipe and was trying to both scrunch and twist it. With help from Laurie, she got that job done!
Laurie and Mary wrapping and twisting a piece of Mary’s
Mary’s finished wrapped piece dyed in jet black hollyhock. photo credit Laurie Hall
I had so much fun with my fellow classmates. We came from a wide variety of backgrounds and even different countries. We all live in Mancos now. Some have been here many decades and some are new to the area like myself. Farmers, an archaeologist, a tapestry weaver, a dye master/farmer/teacher, a park ranger, and all artists.
Carolyn, Mary, Rebecca in the dye class looking at the teeth examples. photo credit Laurie Hall
I had a couple silk scarves to dye. They took the dye really well. My wrapping technique in the scarf on the left could use some work, but it will be a scarf that is lovely to wear regardless. That one was dyed in dyers coreopsis. The scarf to the right used a heart-shaped resist and was dyed in black hollyhock. On both of those scarves you can see I couldn’t resist a tiny line of the teeth pattern at the bottom edge.
Silk scarves dyed with resist techniques in dyers coreopsis and jet black hollyhock
Scabiosa is a marvelous dye. It makes a lovely green in some circumstances as you can see on the cotton scarf with the large circles below. I used the tree ring wrapping method to make this. I also used some wrapping string that had been previously been used the week before in sulphur cosmos dye and that is where the yellow came from. A marvelous and unintended result. Scabiosa also tends to create blue streaks in parts as some of the pigments go to blue. The mystery of when you’re going to get green and when and where you’ll see blue is definitely fun.
Large cotton bandana dyed in scabiosa
Detail of tree ring scabiosa-dyed textile. Note the yellow where the previously dyed string left color behind.
One part of the class I really appreciated was time in the morning to work in the dye garden. Laurie wanted us to get a feeling for where the plants come from and their individual personalities. We did some planting and weeding and got to know the dye plants a little bit. Laurie’s stories about the plant personalities were engaging and I quickly understood that growing your own dyestuff is not for the faint of heart. The sheer number of material it takes to make color is a little staggering.
Dyers chamomile we harvested
The flowers are laid out on big screens on a drying rack to dry for about three days before they can be stored.
Dye flowers drying on big window screens.
On the last day we picked black hollyhocks and used them fresh.
Harvesting hollyhocks for the day’s blue dye bath
Fresh hollyhock dye bath with two shibori pieces in it
Laurie Hall stirring the hollyhock bath which had to go in the kitchen for a fourth burner
Besides being a master dyer, Laurie and her family run a farm that has livestock and huge gardens full of food bound for area restaurants (her kids do this part of the work for the most part). We had a farm tour at the end of the class and it was so fun to see what marvelous things can come from the earth right here in the desert southwest.
Churro sheep on the farm
Buddy the burro. His reputation is as a trick burro but no one knows what his tricks are!
My only regrets are that the class wasn’t longer and that I didn’t actually label each sample with the dye used. I also wish I had decided to join the class earlier and had taken the time to purchase some better textiles to dye. I was just using inexpensive cotton squares for the most part. That is fine to learn on, but if you make a pattern that turns out really beautiful, you want the textile itself to also be beautiful. I did buy a book about stitched shibori so I could experiment with different stitching patterns. I’ll certainly start with dyeing them in synthetic dyes but I also have access to Laurie’s flowers because she sells them locally, so some of them will be naturally dyed for sure.
Laurie Hall teaches dyeing frequently and you should come and take one of her classes! She sells some of her dyes at our local yarn store, Southwest Farm to Yarn. She also sells seeds at Vibrant Earth Seeds in Cortez, CO. Visit her website at https://www.bluebirddyegardens.com/. I can’t recommend Laurie enough as a teacher. I’ll be taking more of her classes!