Indigo in July

A couple of Sundays ago, July 19th to be exact, I participated in a Bandhani workshop with some of the members of the South Coast Weavers and Spinners Guild.  We traveled to Cameron Taylor Brown's "Arts Garage" in Los Angeles for the workshop, and it was a wonderful day.  Bandhani is the Indian way of shibori and the class was taught by several men from India.  One of the pieces I did was a silk scarf that was dyed in indigo.

This workshop got me all excited about dyeing with indigo again so the following week, I set about making a new indigo vat, using Michel Garcia's 1-2-3 method that I had learned from Yoshiko Wada at her Shakerag workshop in 2014.  

My first attempts were a little light and then after the pot sat around and was tweaked for a few of days, I started to get more medium colors.  For experiment purposes, I bought some cotton napkins and am dyeing a set for my son and his wife, both of whom love indigo. 

After I felt confident that my indigo vat was working as it should, I decided I would try dyeing the silk piece I had stenciled with a rice paste resist in Akemi Cohn's Katazome workshop at Shakerag this past June.  I am very happy at how crisp my stencils turned out.  I dipped this piece four times in the indigo vat. Because I did not want to disturb the rice paste resist and have it begin to deteriorate, each dip lasted only about 15 to 20 seconds.  Then it was left to dry thoroughly before the next dip.

One of the skills we learned in the Katazome workshop was drawing and cutting our own stencils using a smoked mulberry paper. It's a very tough paper and you can use the stencil over and over.  From MAIWA in Vancouver, I have purchased all of the supplies I need to do Katazome over this summer.  I am also planning on using other natural dyes, such as lac, weld,  and madder, as well as my indigo vat. 

For this week, though, I am up in Morro Bay with my husband.

Another exciting venture coming up is a workshop September 8th thru 11th with Pam DeGroot an amazing felt artist from Australia.  I just happened upon something on the internet that led me to her website only to find that she would be teaching a four-day workshop at the Eugene Textile Center in Eugene, Oregon.  Of course, I signed up immediately.  I can hardly wait.