Natural Dye Workshop

[BrettRas]

This past week we hosted a natural dye workshop in Ojika. It was quite a good time!
Now that there is a section on the forum for this sort of thing, I'll post info ahead of time in case anyone is interested in hopping a ferry over here to participate in an event!

Take a gander at this blog post written by Yo to see what we were up to on a beautiful Fall day!

https://gotoexperience.wordpress.com/20 ... -workshop/

IMG_1825.jpg (60.86 KiB) Viewed 2601 times

[Zasso Nouka]

Amazing workshop Brett,

That looks really good fun on your blog, it's a shame we live at the opposite end of the country and not just a short ferry ride away. I'd love to give it a go sometime. I didn't know you could use onion skins, we normally have loads laying around after we harvest ours and clean them up for storage and sale so I might try saving them next year and have a go, what sort of form does the iron mordant come in ?

I think we might have Goldenrod growing all over the place here as an invasive weed, might be fun using it for something creative rather than just pulling the stuff out.

Thanks for sharing

[BrettRas]

Thanks Zasso.

The iron mordant we used was a rusty nail dissolved in vinegar. Pretty simple.

The onion skins make for a fabulous dye, pretty hard to go wrong with them apparently.
I would imagine you do have the goldenrod around. It creates a pleasant soft yellow color. Definitely nice to find something useful to do with an invasive exotic!

[gonbechan]

I am totally sold on the onion dye. It really is an impressive and beautiful colour. Who would have thought.

Thank you for this lovely share Brett.

[Zasso Nouka]

The iron mordant we used was a rusty nail dissolved in vinegar. Pretty simple.

Really ? It's that simple, I was imagining you'd need some special preparation. Rusty nails are something we have plenty off. Definitely going to give this a go next year after our onion harvest, it looks good fun and easily doable.

Thanks Brett

[Makichan]

Hi Brett,

Lovely workshop, how often do you organise these ? Do you hold them regularly ? It looks like you have quite a few people there and seems like everyone is enjoying themselves.

[BrettRas]

Lovely workshop, how often do you organise these ? Do you hold them regularly ? It looks like you have quite a few people there and seems like everyone is enjoying themselves.

Thanks Makichan,
We want to do more workshops like this, on a variety of topics, as we go forward. We've done a few small tests before, but this is the first workshop where we sort of made it official. More people signed up than we expected, and it did turn out really well so we were happy with it!

That looks great! I've always wanted to learn indigo dyeing. A person I know grows her own here but I haven't participated yet.

I did a bunch of natural dyes for paper that I made by myself years and years ago. You can make a pretty easy frame with spare wood and window screen to make the paper.

Thanks, the indigo is great! The color change when exposed to air is really fun to see happen in front of your own eyes!
I've done a paper making workshop in the past myself, really enjoyable as well. Might be something I'll try again in the future.

[CYEK]

Brett, if I had known earlier I would have come over as you are not so far away from me. Definitely keep us updated on anything else in the future although Im heading up north for the winter.

[BrettRas]

Brett, if I had known earlier I would have come over as you are not so far away from me. Definitely keep us updated on anything else in the future although Im heading up north for the winter.

Yeah, I thought about posting it earlier, but with all the happenings at CLJ and whatnot I held back. I'll post any others we put together going forward though.

How long do you spend up North? Is this a yearly migration?

[CYEK]

Was meant to be 80% down south and 20% up north but this has been reversed. The vote is 3 to 1 for more time up north than down south. As usual Im the one that was out voted. Try to go back and forth every few months but there is always something on the kids calendars that I have to attend. Luckily have had the last 6 weeks to myself and just doing DIY projects and relaxing trying to catch fish etc.