Natural Dye Workshop 1
Posted 6/6/2008 9:01am by Eugene Wyatt.
The call to colors
Learn how to dye
The farm has been busy this Spring: shearing the sheep in March, then lambing the ewes in April and finally getting the flock to pasture in May. Now we have time for other things. Dominique dyed new colors that I will present & offer for-sale here next week; they will be available in the stand tomorrow.
She dyed a very good Cochineal/Madder red—kudos in crimson—this is a hard color to get. The addition of Cochineal to the dye bath is a semi-modern (18th Century) and New World variation of Turkey Red.
"Turkey Red was the name given to a red dye which had been developed from the root of the madder plant. The knowledge that madder was an effective red dye was not new. The Greeks, Libyans and Romans all used it as did the Moors. After its use was lost the Dutch rediscovered its cultivation in 1494 and for the next three hundred years were the world’s largest exporters.
In 1747 Prince Charles Edward Stuart disguised himself as Betty Burke by wearing a block printed madder dress to escape from the English. From the middle of the eighteenth century chemists and industrialists from all over Europe had tried to find the industrial process that would give them a bright, fast, non fade red. Ultimately French chemists obtained the secrets from what is now Turkey and the name stuck." From The Color Museum
That Dominique can dye well does not surprise me—she can do many things—but that she learned most of what she knows about natural dyeing here on the farm, does surprise me. They say, "You don't know a subject until you can teach it." Well if I do know something about natural dyes. I plan to find out what that something is by sharing it with you.
I will teach an online dye workshop, a syllabus of natural colors to be more accurate, which will be a dizzying spin round the color wheel that you can enter into anytime at any color and go in any direction. Our curriculum will describe the step-by-step process (with plenty of photos) of dyeing yarn with natural colors in 100 qt. stainless kettles on propane burners as we do here on the farm, and in smaller pots on a stove top using utensils that you have in your kitchen.
No secrets and no tuition: along with tricks-of-the-trade that I've picked up dyeing 1000's of pounds of yarn, I will share with you where to buy dyestuffs & utensils, what how-to books on dyeing I like, and when in-person workshops around the country are to be conducted by master dyers, and much more. Also, either Dominique or I will be available anytime for questions about your color projects.
We will begin this week and continue every week thereafter as sheep blog entries; click the "Natural Dye Workshop" tag in "Blog Categories/Labels" to call the syllabi up in sequence. After an introduction to utensils and mordants, we'll get into the reds: Turkey Red with Madder, Cochineal red with its tints from orange to fuchsia, and maybe the reds of Lac and Quebracho too, unless another color comes up first.
Yes we're neighbors. I had hoped to start the dyeing workshops this week, and I will but in a shortened version than my promised vision. Foot problems in the ewe flock recently flared up and the sheep must be attended to first, daily foot baths, etc.
If you subscribe to the newsletter or to the RSS feed from the site, they will keep you advised of what the workshop is doing, what colors have been dyed, and will be dyed, in the workshop as chronicled in the blog and on the Workshop page.
Thanks for your interest,
Eugene
Sounds as if you are really busy hope all works out.
Would you ever consider teaching a group (or only a couple ) of local people a dye workshop in the future?
Thank you ~~~~Holly
Yes teaching a dye workshop locally is certainly an attractive idea and is a possibility once a curriculum is determined by the online workshops. Stay tuned...
Do you ever get to NYC on Saturday, if so you could come by the stand in the Union Square Greenmarket to look at what you'll learn how to do.
Eugene
So if you get something together please let me know.
Thanks for your time~~~Holly
Good luck with your kids; is your workshop through the Warwick Valley School system?
Later on, after the online workshop, if there is sufficient interest I may conduct an in-person workshop.
Look at the Yarn Tree in Brooklyn; they're offering workshops in natural dyeing; see the link I posted here or Google them
Best of luck,
Eugene
"Kool-Aid Dyeing - How you can dye yarn at home with no special tools! You will end up with enough dyed yarn to make a colorful scarf!!"
Eugene
Thank you for the extra info on the Yarn Tree. I'll check that out.
I work for Museum Village in Monroe.
If you are interested the director has said she would like to see what you have to offer. It would be to train those of us who are teaching workshops. Our ideal is to use the dyestuff people used in the middle 1800's.
I'll keep reading your online workshop in the meantime.
Thanks again~~~Holly