NATURAL DYEING AT JULIE’S

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!