Video From LIVE FEEDBACK FRIDAY: Lani Estill

This week’s FEEDBACK FRIDAY was with fiber artist and rancher, Lani Estill. Lani Estill and her family own and operate Bare Ranch, a vertically integrated diversified livestock operation producing cattle, sheep, alfalfa and grass hay. The ranch is in Northeastern California and Northwest Nevada. They practice regenerative agriculture and with the help of partners like Fibershed and Carbon Cycle Institute are now operating under a Carbon Farm Plan. Lani is also the founder of Lani’s Lana ~ Fine Rambouillet Wool, a commercial wool business and small yarn line. Watch the video recording here: We talked about a lot of exciting … Read more

Video From LIVE FEEDBACK FRIDAY: Kristin Arzt

This week’s FEEDBACK FRIDAY was with Kristin Arzt of Scrambles Quilts. Watch the video recording here: Kristin Arzt is a natural dyer, educator, gardener and designer based in Oakland, California. Kristin believes that by exploring the collision of textiles, plants and sustainability, she can help make the study of natural dyes accessible to everyone through education and enthusiasm. She is the Textiles Department Head at The Crucible, a non-profit organization dedicated to making arts education accessible to local youth and the surrounding community. We sell Kristin’s *Instant* Natural Indigo + Shibori Kit on our site. The kit includes all of … Read more

Video From LIVE FEEDBACK FRIDAY: Madame Magar

This week’s FEEDBACK FRIDAY was with Leigh Magar of Madame Magar. Leigh talked about all things indigo from her work as an indigo artist, designer, farmer and educator on issues surrounding indigo’s origins. Watch the video recording here: Madame Magar is a textile design studio inspired by art, nature, folkways and history. The studio embraces a “seed to stitch” design philosophy that explores the history, a rich yet tangled past of place; while living and working on a former indigo plantation. The “seed to stitch” vision is inspired by Eliza Lucas Pinckney; who as a young girl in the 1740’s … Read more

Video From LIVE FEEDBACK FRIDAY: Emily Carris-Duncan of The Art Dept

This week’s FEEDBACK FRIDAY was with Emily Carris-Duncan of The Art Dept. Emily talked about the practice of using natural dyes to tell historical stories. As you all asked, Emily created this PDF for us of African American Quilt Researchers. Watch the video recording here: Emily says: “Much of my work is born out of a search for self and a desire to heal historical wounds. As a trans-racially adopted black queer, non binary person raised in modern America my story is incomplete, riddled with holes; a result of malicious neglect and the casualty of power, supremacy, domination, and shame. … Read more

Video From LIVE FEEDBACK FRIDAY: Flora Obscura

This week’s FEEDBACK FRIDAY was with Flora Obscura founder/designer Alison Kelly. Alison Kelly is a fiber artist and fashion designer that creates one-of-a-kind textiles for Flora Obscura by adapting ancient natural dye techniques to combine with eco-printing: a process of laying flora directly onto cloth to be alchemically steamed and permanently imprinted with flora. Watch the video recording here: Here is her website. Here is her Instagram page. Some of the eco-printing books she mentioned: India Flint books Wild Colour by Jenny Dean And if you have time on Wednesday, October 7th to catch the RISD Nature Lab Common Thread … Read more

Video From LIVE FEEDBACK FRIDAY: Babs Behan

This week’s FEEDBACK FRIDAY was with natural dyer and specialist of non-toxic natural dyeing techniques and bio-regional, regenerative textile systems, Babs Behan. Babs is the author of Botanical Inks Plant-To-Print Dyes, Techniques and Projects Founder of Botanical Inks non-toxic natural dye studio and the Bristol Cloth project. Watch the video recording here: Follow Botanical Inks and Bristol Cloth on Instagram. Check out her website here. From Babs Behan: “I am committed to the transformation of our textile industry and the possibility of global environmental and cultural regeneration, inspired by my connection with nature. My work is with natural dyes and … Read more

Video From LIVE FEEDBACK FRIDAY: Kathy Hattori Q&A

This week’s FEEDBACK FRIDAY was all about Botanical Colors’ Founder/President, Kathy Hattori for a Q&A. Watch the video recording here: …and here are a bunch of questions Kathy didn’t get to that she’s answered: I would like to know how to work with a lump of logwood extract that got damp. maybe in a blog post? Yes, we’ll put a post together that talks about stock solutions. I have mixed old nails with vinegar and the liquid started foaming. What is happening? It sounds like it was a reaction from the metal and the vinegar.  Perhaps some of the nails … Read more

Video From LIVE FEEDBACK FRIDAY: Harvard’s Forbes Pigment Collection

This week’s FEEDBACK FRIDAY was with the Forbes Pigment Collection director Narayan Khandekar. Narayan is the director of Harvard’s Straus Center and the senior conservation scientist, who oversees the Forbes Pigment Collection. Watch the video recording here: The Forbes Pigment Collection is an assemblage of more than 2,700 pigments (and counting!)—is in active use by conservation scientists at the museums, who rely on the samples for testing and as reference materials in the analytical laboratory. For that reason, most of the collection can be glimpsed only from outside the glass-walled Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies. Former Fogg Museum … Read more

RSVP: LIVE FEEDBACK FRIDAY With Botanical Colors’ Founder Kathy Hattori

Join us September 11th, 9am Pacific, 12 pm Eastern for a live Zoom FEEDBACK FRIDAY with Botanical Colors’ Founder Kathy Hattori. We are going old school this week with Kathy answering all the natural dye/mordant/process questions we can get to. Send your questions ahead of time to me (Amy) at [email protected]. RSVP for FEEDBACK FRIDAY with Kathy Hattori HERE. What Botanical Colors Does: The way that conventional color is applied to clothes is broken. “Wet processing” as industrial dyeing is called, is one of the top polluters in the world, consuming enormous amounts of energy, water and petrochemical based colorants. … Read more