Despite our numbers being reduced by sickness, it was a dedicated group that met on May 18th to explore the world of natural dyes and eco-prints. arlee had come a few days early to experiment with different indigenous plant materials and to see what effect our water had on the prints. The results were very different than what arlee would get at home in Calgary - one of the many things that makes these dye techniques so much to experiment with! The first day was taken up with collecting plant material from around our property, learning the basic principles of dyeing and printing, and preparing our first bundles which we then let stew overnight. On the morning of day two we unwrapped our bundles to see what we had. Some of the results were a little underwhelming, but others were more encouraging and after seeing the effects that modifier dips had on our pieces we were all ready to knuckle down and create more bundles. The motto for the second day was definitely "Go Big or Go Home! as we all loaded our pieces with plant materials and metals. We also expanded our repertoire to include using plant materials from the garden that were not indigenous to the area and fabrics that had been pre-mordanted the day before in various solutions. By this time our bundle bath "stew" had developed nicely and was helping to create some fantastic results. By day three we were all confidently experimenting and ready to move on to stitching. Our homework from the day before had been to choose a piece that we would use for stitching and to look for inspiration from within the piece. After reviewing some basic stitch techniques we were let loose with our pieces and spent the rest of the workshop happily stitching away and discussing what we learned and making plans for another workshop next year!
To see some of the results from the workshop click here