Facilitating a Natural Dye Workshop - Shibori and Bundle Dyeing at Bath City Farm
If you’re interested in learning natural dyeing with me, I run regular in-person workshops in the Bristol and North Somerset area, and occasionally online ones for those further afield. Click here for more information and to see what’s currently on offer…
My workshop at Bath City Farm earlier in August (2019) was so much fun! I taught such a lovely group of students, who were keen to learn about sustainable natural dyeing with foraged plants and food waste, all in the gorgeous surroundings of the farm.
We foraged for common plants and flowers on the farm, mindfully gathering what was plentiful and in season. For the dye pots, we picked, dahlias, tansy, and purple sage. For the bundle dyes we gathered a selection of blooms and leaves, discussing the possible colour outcomes as we went along.
We made dye baths using the tansy, purple sage and dahlias, and heated up an avocado skin bath I’d prepared earlier. While those were heating up I showed the students some simple shibori inspired folding techniques using wooden pegs, sticks and string on squares of cotton cloth that had been mordanted with tannin and alum.
The results were really impressive (see middle image)! I’m a particular fan of the orange we got from the dahlias - I hadn’t dyed with them before so it was a genuine surprise.
The bottom right photo shows my test pieces that were left in the pot as the dyes extracted, form L-R: Avocado skins (dusky pink), dahlia (orange), purple sage (olive green) and tansy (greeny-yellow).
Finally we made bundle dyes using silk mordanted with album, by laying petals and other plant material (including onion skins, which make a great rusty orange colour!) onto the fabric, rolling tightly then tying up with string before steaming. Once cooled, the bundles were, well, unbundled, revealing the colourful plant pattern underneath!
The workshop was a great success and really enjoyable. I love that dye plants kept me on my toes producing some unexpected results - I hadn’t dyed with sage or dahlias before! The farm very kindly let me take some plants home, and along with and the leftover dye baths; I’ll be creating more colour experiments using my local wool yarn soon…