4.12.2016

More Indigo Dyeing

Last weekend I had the pleasure of teaching my fourth indigo dye workshop at ReBelle, as well as two shibori classes. I have talked about the technical side of indigo dyeing before so this entry won't be about that. If you want to learn a bit about indigo, specifically my love affair with pre-reduced indigo check out that post.

Shibori projects right in various
levels of oxidation.
I love teaching dye classes. They are open to all types of crafters and unlike my other beginning classes, they change every time I teach them so they are never boring. I started with just an indigo dye workshop the first time out, but other than the quilters who came knowing exactly what they wanted to do, the class seemed to be too unstructured for most people. The second time I taught this class it was for the local fiber guild who took nicely to the open dye format. The third time I taught at the shop I added a shibori class right before the dye workshop where I provided two projects (a wrap and a tea towel) and that class sold out pretty quickly. Things worked well with the project format, so well that we added a batik class to the mix and moved both resist classes to a Saturday and the dyeing to Sunday so that students would have a chance to prepare their fabrics using the more involved shibori techniques. This format worked really well, not only did students have the opportunity to try two different resist techniques, everyone had plenty of time to prepare their projects for the dye vat and the results were amazing. Now that all of the kinks have been worked out, I am really looking forward to the next indigo weekend in September.

The great unveilling, cutting the threads on some sewn shibori.

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