Textile & Pattern blog posts for inspriation

I had the Blues…The Rebellious Blues (II of II)

September 24, 2014 by Heather Filed Under: Inspiration & Education, Photography, Textiles & Pattern

I’ll continue to weave tale of Sea Island Blues here with this past weekend’s Indigo Retreat in Charleston at Rebellion Farms. I’m calling this event the Rebellious Blues workshop! This event marked the launch of Sea Island Indigo workshops and retreats in Charleston and the surrounding low country area (& maybe further!).

Here’s our swag bag which included a variety of fabrics, yarns and trim in both cellulose and protein fibers for each of us to dye. There were additional yarns and fabrics for sale and attendee’s also brought their own goodies.

The first day included a (brief) history of Indigo in the southeast US, a visit to the Charleston Museum and a demonstration from The Gullah Lady, Sharon Cooper Murray who showed us all the traditional technique of Rag Quilting.

On our second day of the workshop we all (around 20 of us total) gathered out at Rebellion Farms, just outside of Charleston. This farm is a special place where Donna has been nurturing a crop of Indigo just for this workshop. So we all headed out to the field to see the beautiful Indigo growing and to begin to gather leaves to learn the technique of Fresh Leaf Vats.

We had not one but Two incredible instructors for this workshop, Donna Hardy of Sea Island Indigo and Kathy Hattori of Botanical Colors (Seattle WA).

Above, Kathy collects leaves from the indigo growing on the farm. Below, the fresh leaf vat process begins with water.

We are all as excited as Donna to see this transformation from leaf to dye material. Below, the blue is starting to show in the water surrounding the indigo leaves.

Finally after a couple of hours the fresh leaf vat has developed the beautiful coppery sheen on the surface that tells us the vat is ready to be used for dyeing.

While we waited we stitched, bound and clamped our fabrics using various shibori techniques.

The blue that came from the fresh leaf vat was a remarkable vivid almost turquoise blue. Each type of Indigo and vat yields subtle variations in the colors hue and saturation.

Saturday was the final day of the workshop and we had several vats all going at once including the 1-2-3 Fructose vat and a couple vats each for dyeing cellulose and protein fibers.

The farm pigs kept us company…but since there was a hog roasting right next to us we didn’t get too attached.

And we stitched…

And we ohhhed and ahhed over the beauty of the vats…

We witnessed Sharon Cooper Murray create her indigo rope babies…

And we dyed so much fabric and yarn that we covered just about every available surface!

Finally it was time to wrap things up and begin to transform this make shift dye shed into a farm dinner extravaganza!

Within a couple hours we re-set the tables and adorned them with indigo dyed linens and farm cut wild flowers and indigo sprigs. Every place you looked there were indigo dyed textiles draped on tables, lines and more. It was truly a beautiful and magical setting!

We were practically drooling over the smell of the Ossabaw hog that had been roasting right next to our vats all day. This beautiful hog was donated by Holy City Hogs and roasted to perfection by Jeff Allen of Rebellion and his friends. We finally came to feast with farm and fiber friends on southern favorites like okra stew, cornbread, Carolina gold rice (from Anson Mills), butter beans and hash while celebrating old traditions brought back to life.

The evening closed with one last sunset visit to the field and the debut screening of Cotton Road, a movie about the global supply chain of cotton. We were mesmerized, filled and satisfied in our souls with everything we came together to experience for this workshop and this feast in celebration of some of the incredibly rich southern traditions that are worth preserving.

I left (& hope others did too) feeling sparked with curiosity and the desire to secure another string of our Southern American heritage. These are traditions that have brought farmers and artists together over centuries. They continue to teach us and inspire us through friendship and gatherings like this one-touched by a rainbow, magically blessed and hopefully containing seeds of both our roots and our future that will sail the winds and be planted and cultivated by many! I’m certain there will be many more great Sea Island Indigo events to come but this was the first and it was very special indeed!

I had the Blues…The Sea Island Blues (I of II)

September 23, 2014 by Heather Filed Under: Handmade, Inspiration & Education, Textiles & Pattern

I had the blues but in the BEST way! The Sea Island Blues! Two weeks ago I went down to Ossabaw Island with Donna Hard to help with a 2 day Indigo retreat out on this magical Island.

I have wanted to go to Ossabaw since I was in school at SCAD and I finally got the opportunity for which I am so grateful for. You can’t just go out there for any old reason, you practically have to be invited to go…or chance upon the beach by way of boat but while I was on this island and never saw the beach or really even the ocean because it’s wild and there are no paved roads. There was so much to see though that I really didn’t miss it but maybe another trip, another day…

It is a remarkably beautiful place, kind of frozen in time but not exactly. Cut off from the mainland and protected through partnerships between the State of GA and the Ossabaw Foundation. I highly recommend checking out their website and reading up on it. I predict that you will be hearing more about this special place in years to come. It’s already quite well know in “these parts” for the wild Ossabaw Hogs, which I did not encounter on the island during my sunrise walks, thank god! But I did come by them this past weekend, more on that to come…there’s a thread to be woven here so please be patient while I continue to weave.

Upon this Island you may stumble upon oyster shell middens, graceful water birds such as egrets and heron’s, deer, wild indigo, loggerhead sea turtles, Indigo eating feral donkey’s-who can’t stay out of the action, ancient pottery shards, racoons, Tabby Ruins, Slave houses, a once active pottery kiln-part of the former Genesis Project, more Spanish moss than I’ve ever seen in one place and a resident sharp shooter for those Wild Ossabaw hogs. But since I had the blues we got down to mixing blue…Indigo blue which has roots on this island that was at one point an Indigo Plantation. Once we had some vats prepared the workshop participants arrived and learned all about the Island and using natural Indigo as a sustainable solution for making textiles more beautiful.

This workshop was open to all levels of experience and they came, learned and created some exceptional pieces. Some of the folks who came knew a thing or two about fibers and natural dye and others were totally new to the experience, like the donkey’s who didn’t so much care about the indigo or textiles and were mostly looking for handouts of other sorts.

I’m pretty sure everyone had a lot of fun too, despite about a million love bugs pestering us while we worked. We had several of the resident DNR folks join in the fun, Indigo can be addictive and there are several on Ossabaw who’ve been bitten:) not by the love bug but by the blue bug.

We had a very special visit from Mrs. West who is now 101 and loves this island so much she lives here still, with a caretaker or two. She didn’t feel the same when she arrived at age 10 and welcomed the island by spitting on it. She came to love this land though and had the vision to donate the island as a Heritage preserve. Mrs. West wanted us to help her dye a bit of her hair or perhaps one of her dog’s tails, instead we convinced her an Ossabaw tee shirt would be a safer and more long lasting choice.

Ossabaw is a very special place for many reasons and for Donna, that reason is all about the Indigo. The Indigo led her here and will hopefully continue to lead her and many others here to learn about the art of natural dyeing with this remarkable plant that yields it’s beautiful array of blues…the ocean and the sky are ever present when you witness a piece of cloth that’s been dyed with the artful hands of a skilled indigo dyer.

Here’s the happy group of workshop participants from Saturday’s workshop sharing some of their beautiful creations…Now you can understand why I had the Blues! In part two I’ll share last weekend’s blues…not just 1 day of dyeing but a whole long weekend retreat with two master natural dyers.

Fiber Play with Sea Island Indigo

May 9, 2014 by Heather Filed Under: Art & Design, Handmade, Inspiration & Education, Textiles & Pattern

If you follow me on Facebook or Instagram you may have seen some of my recent posts of indigo dyed fingernails etc…here’s why. I was recently re-introduced to a wonderful woman named Donna Hardy through a mutual fiber friend, who moved to Charleston about a year ago. The funny thing is we had met each other years ago when we were both living in Georgia and a part of the Chattahoochee Handweavers Guild. Since then, Donna has spent years researching and tracking down regional species of Indigo that were once grown as production crop and exported to England from the LowCountry as well as learning from other Master Dyers the art of natural dyeing. This year she is working with Clemson extension to grow field trials in hopes of reviving this beautiful source of natural blue dye. Donna graciously invited me to play with her using a recently set up vat. It was then that I realized that probably all of my previous experiences with Indigo vat dyeing were synthetic vats:(
Fiber Play

I am honored to begin to learn about natural dye from someone who is truly a master dyer. If you want to learn more about setting up and using a natural indigo vat, Donna will be leading a 3 day low country indigo workshop this fall. Check out Botanical Interest website for more information and registration HERE. Indigo certainly seems to be quite trendy and popular these days but if you really want to learn how to master the art of using this beautiful natural dye, come join us!

The Beginnings of Love

February 14, 2014 by Heather Filed Under: Art & Design, Inspiration & Education, Photography, Textiles & Pattern

Last fall I fell down the rabbit hole of into the world of quilting via a project I’m working on. It took me back to Beginnings of Love, you know that feeling you get when you are super excited and start to LOVE something or someone? Well I’ve shared a bit about my trip to Quilt Market in Houston but not much about why…

Here’s the why, I’m working as a design consultant for a local company who has recently launched an exciting tool for anyone who loves creating their own textile designs! It’s called FabricMaker and it’s a commercial quality (means you can WASH it and expose it to LIGHT!) fabric printing system! I was so excited to collaborate on this project because for quite a few years now I have experimented with various image transfer and print techniques to get my photo’s onto fabric! I was not fully happy with any of the results, the fabric’s either came out faded looking, were not wash fast, would fade if exposed to light, left a residue (transfers) or involved tedious steps of soaking (pre, post etc)…ughh. In the end I kind of gave up because I didn’t think the results were worth the hassle.

Well, along came FabricMaker via a serendipitous encounter…they found Spacecraft Studio’s here in Charleston and my dear friend passed my name along to them.

Now that I’ve had some time to play with this printer and learn all about it I’ve also decided to teach myself to quilt. I have begun a sampler quilt using photo’s of flowers, foliage and other bits of nature. I hope to get this quilt done for fall quilt market but in the meantime I’ve embarked on some smaller projects.

The Beginnings of Love

These little mug rug’s of love were something I did for the Charleston Modern Quilt Guild February meeting. The pattern came from Here. The two are slightly different in size because the pattern was written for Die-cut pieces which I didn’t have and in the first I had to make adjustments to re-calculate…my many years of creating engineered and woven designs will serve me well in the world of Quilting! Sadly due to weather and changes in schedule I was not able to make it to the swap, so I now have two! I think they are pretty sweet and I LOVE working with my photo’s on Fabric. If you want to print your own fabric designs, check out Fabricmaker‘s systems, they are affordable, amazing quality and really have the best color saturation I’ve seen anywhere on the market!

Happy Valentines, Loves!

PS…These are the two images I used in the above projects…I didn’t create the text fabric’s but I will be making my own custom text fabric designs soon!

Capture

Textile Ice Dyeing Pt 1

February 3, 2013 by Heather Filed Under: Art & Design, Inspiration & Education, Textiles & Pattern

I’ve been very excited to experiment with Ice Dyeing and this week I finally had the time, space and necessary materials available to get started. I have a friend who works for a florist here in Charleston and she knows I’m always on the lookout for flowers with vibrant color. Over the last 6 months I’ve collected different varieties of petals separated by color and have frozen them in 1 Gal zip bags. With Valentines (and the prospect of more red flowers to come my way) I decided to begin with the batch of red petals (mostly from red tulips). Below I gathered a variety of fabric and yarn materials to test. I included a few types of silk, cotton, linen, wool and some blends of these.

Textile Ice Dyeing

When I experiment with Dyeing I always try to keep notes on specific quantities, materials used, times etc but so much of the fun of this process is the unexpected!

I put the red frozen flower petals inside a pillow case (anything else would work that would keep the materials contained).

I presoaked the materials in about 2 gallons of lukewarm water with vinegar (mordant) and I submerged the petals inside the pillow case in the bucket giving it a good swish around. I continued to stir the materials, squeezing the dyestuff inside the pillow case several times a day over the next 48 hrs. This is the hard part, leaving the materials alone for so long when you can see the beautiful colors developing. I waited the full 48 hrs before removing the fabrics to be rinsed and dried (by hand).

Once out of the dye bath the colors varied quite a bit from pale pink to grey to purple. The wool and silk (protein fibers) took up the colors much more intensely then the cotton and linen (cellulose) fibers. I pretty much expected this result. I gave the materials a few soaks in warm water with a bit of detergent (delicate wash type) and sorted them into “satisfactory” and needs additional dyeing. I did not discard the almost spent tulip petals and as you can see below (the yellow areas of the petals), much of the color has already been extracted from the plant material but I wanted to extract more so I decided to keep going with this dyebath.

I added red/orange shade petals from orchids and roses right on top of the partially ‘spent’ tulip petals. Another 1 gallon bag of materials went back into the bucket (pic below) along with the “unsatisfactory” materials (cottons) and some new undyed materials (again wool, silk and cotton). This time I did not add additional vinegar so the mordant will not be as strong.

The process of dyeing (weather natural or synthetic) is a little mysterious and always yields some surprising results. I have used mostly synthetic dyes in the past but as I experiment with natural dyeing I feel much more comfortable with the materials knowing that for the most part they do not pose a threat to my health or the environment. The water will eventually be used in the garden and the plants will go into the compost heap. The fabrics can be worn knowing they don’t contain dangerous chemicals and I’ve created something from NOTHING!

I had the Blues…The Rebellious Blues (II of II)

I had the Blues…The Sea Island Blues (I of II)

Fiber Play with Sea Island Indigo

The Beginnings of Love

Textile Ice Dyeing Pt 1

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