Thursday night, Julie hosted a fun backyard dyeing party for the students from the Advanced Natural Dyeing class. During the class we weren’t able to get the zinc lime indigo vat going properly, so Julie offered to have us over when she got one going successfully at home.

It was the perfect night to be outside eating fresh baked bread and cheese, drinking iced tea and experimenting with indigo. There were two indigo vats that Julie had going. One was a zinc lime indigo vat (you can see the ‘flower’ below that forms on top of the vat when it is ready for dyeing) and the other was a natural fermentation vat. We found the natural fermentation vat to be deeper in colour and I felt like I could try to do this type of indigo vat on my own. It was pretty exciting to try out other types of indigo. What is it about indigo blue?

I did some Itajime Shibori, which is created by simply folding and clamping your fabric. It’s so simple, but the results are stunning. I’m really happy with how my square window panes turned out and it was my first time trying to do triangular folds. I’m not too sure what I’m doing with these indigo pieces but I’m sure you’ll see them re-appear in another form in the future.

We also set up a pot of cochineal with lime juice, which seems to give some brilliant red results to the yarns that Susan and Julie were dyeing. We tried mixing cochineal and log wood into another pot and got a pretty purplish colour.

I over-dyed a few pieces that will go into my natural dyed quilt. I think I’m ready to assemble the quilt top and back. I can’t wait to see how all these dyed samples look together.

We stayed outside dyeing and chatting until it got too dark to see what we were doing and the mosquitos started to bite. We missed Carolanne and Margie that night, who couldn’t make it, but we talked about another get together since we had so much fun.

We ended the night with a raspberry pie that I got at Mabel’s on Roncesvalles. YUM. I’m plotting going back for another one that I might try to eat all by myself.

Check out Arounna’s photos here and Julie’s photos here. The top photo in this post is by Brian who took some great shots while I was unfolding my fabric.

p.s. Julie opened up a little shop on etsy to sell some limited run natural dyed accessories and yarns!

One of our many new classes is an Advanced Natural Dyeing class. Many of the past Natural Dyeing students wanted a next level class where they could explore more dyestuffs and different techniques. Also, we just love taking classes from Julie. The advanced class is completely self directed, so each student has their own personal projects and develops a plan with Julie ahead of time.

Natural dyeing is really exciting. I love when the back area and kitchen of the workroom changes into a laboratory with pots everywhere that are bubbling up with bundles of fabric inside. It’s messy and chaotic and thrilling. Also, dyeing with a group of people is so much fun.

I had two projects that I wanted to work on. The first was a very simple natural dyed quilt. I took some organic cotton brushed sheeting and randomly cut it into pieces that I dyed and over-dyed into various colours. My plan is to simply stitch all the pieces back together to create a front and back of a quilt. I’ve kept pretty good notes on what each piece was dyed in, so the quilt will be a bit of a map of all the dyeing I did in class.

My second project was to dye a piece of silk for a dress. I’ve been pinning all kinds of inspirational dyeing images on Pinterest. In particular, I really loved this super dark, inky dress and wanted to try to replicate that depth of colour. A lot of the natural dye colours end up being very soft and muted, so I thought I would have to do some over-dyeing to build up that kind of colour. By accident, I ended up creating a very dark logwood bath using an older bundle of logwood chips that had been previously used and I had kept for the past few months in a plastic bag. I think something about the wood staying wet for so long, released a lot of colour into the bath and we got a purple that was almost black. There are so many great surprises in natural dyeing. I twisted up and tied my bundle of silk and cooked it carefully in the bath for a while. I’m so happy with how it turned out in the end and love the shibori pattern it created.

Arounna made all kinds of lovely scarves and bags from her class work. Margie had all kinds of shibori, yarn and even her beautiful crochet stones dipped into the pots. Carolanne was working on an indigo shibori dyed piece of washi paper that she is hand quilting. Brian was working on creating fabric samples to make quilt blocks from. Susan did some fun solar dyeing, yarn and shibori experiments. Even Julie bundled up some fabric during class for solar dyeing. We had such a great time in class together and I think there will have to be a little dye party reunion during the summer. I want to do more dyeing!

Natural dyeing is something I’ve been wanting to try for a very long time. The idea of one day growing things in my backyard that I can harvest and then dye my own fabrics with is incredibly exciting. When I browse through seed catalogs, I’m always taking note of the plants that are candidates for my future dye garden. When I caught wind that Julie Sinden had lots of amazing experience in the field, I set the wheels in motion to set up a class as quickly as possible.

The class was pretty magical. It opened up a whole new world of possibility with textiles and sewing for me. Just the history alone of where these natural dyes came from is so interesting. Also, natural dyes are not exactly what I thought – you can’t actually use beets to dye fabric or yarn, as it won’t last and neither will turmeric. Pomegranate skins will give you a yellow-ish colour, not pink or red. Rhubarb root, mushrooms, oak leaves and walnut husks are all possible dyes that I’m interested in trying. I’m cooking up some future dyeing projects for myself already.

The last day of the class we did indigo dyeing which is a post all on its’ own.

Just look at all this yummy colour!