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Video From LIVE FEEDBACK FRIDAY: Growing Dye Plants From Seed

This week’s FEEDBACK FRIDAY featured lots of helpful information to grow, harvest and dye with your own dye plants from seed. Watch the video recording here: Plant Workshop’s Milisa Moses, Botanical Colors’ President Kathy Hattori and Botanical Colors’ Sustainability Director Amy DuFault went over the basics of growing, harvesting and dyeing with your own dye plants starting from seed. We featured a few of the varieties that we love to grow and showed you what colors come from them. Milisa gave guidance for starting your own seeds and Kathy and Amy showed some dye techniques and colors achieved from a … Read more

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Usually for our Mordant Monday, we dive into a mordant topic, alas we’re in Bali and we have no idea what day it is! For this week’s blog post, we are changing it up as we’re feeling so nourished and inspired by our time in Bali, we needed to share it with you all. We’re drawing on the end of our trip and are gobsmacked by the kindness, patience and extensive knowledge the Threads of Life and their team are so graciously bestowing upon us. Here we share with you the process of learning about Morinda Roots and how they … Read more

Video From LIVE FEEDBACK FRIDAY: Natalie Stopka

This week’s FEEDBACK FRIDAY was with natural dye artist and educator Natalie Stopka. Watch the video recording here: From Natalie (chat box questions answered and more!) >Clothlet Resources: The Materials and Techniques of Medieval Painting by Daniel V. Thompson, 1956. An Anonymous 14th Century Treatise De Arte Illuminandi, The Technique of Manuscript Illumination translated by Daniel Varney Thompson, Jr, and George Heard Hamilton, 1933. (full text online) Looking back over my notes, I did pre-mordant my linen clothlets before applying the stain. Because of the weak attraction between linen and alum, it acts primarily to stabilize the botanical colorant rather than bind it to … Read more

Video From LIVE FEEDBACK FRIDAY: Ayobami Adeyemo

This week’s FEEDBACK FRIDAY was with Ayobami Adeyemo. Ayobami Adeyemo is a textile researcher/artist who studies and experiments with different dyestuffs and textile making processes. He has worked on the Indigo Shade Map team to research and study different plants that produce indigo all over the world. As of now, he is managing his own personal project dubbed “Ore mi” which is Yoruba for “my friend” as a means of learning more about natural dye processes and communication through textiles. We met Ayobami through Rosa Chang, MICA and the Indigo Shade Map, an evolving online, interactive site that maps the … Read more

Video From LIVE FEEDBACK FRIDAY: Rust Belt Fibershed + Drift Lab Dye Studio

This week’s FEEDBACK FRIDAY was with Sarah Pottle and Jess Boeke, twin sisters from Cleveland, OH, who are natural dyers, educators, activists, and are the co-founders of the Rust Belt Fibershed and Drift Lab Dye Studio. Watch the video recording here: Links we promised to put here: Rust Belt Fibershed Drift Lab Textile Co. Grounded Teaching Chico Flax webinar Fibrevolution (more flax farming in the US!) Fibershed video: Black Fiber Systems: with Teju Adisa-Farrar, Sha’Mira Covington, and Amber Tamm Call of the Reed Warbler-A New Agriculture, A New Earth, by Charles Massy Fibershed: Growing a Movement of Farmers, Fashion Activists, … Read more

Honoring Black History Month Every Day

(Artwork: Herring Run, Kenya Miles, Founder of Blue Light Junction) Celebrate Black History Month learning about natural dyers, farmers and activists of color here on Botanical Colors. Black History Month is an annual celebration of achievements by African Americans and a time for recognizing their central role in U.S. history. Also known as African American History Month, the event grew out of “Negro History Week,” the brainchild of noted historian Carter G. Woodson and other prominent African Americans. Since 1976, every U.S. president has officially designated the month of February as Black History Month. This year, the Black History Month … Read more

Video From LIVE FEEDBACK FRIDAY: Ethnobotany with Deepa Preeti Natarajan

This week’s FEEDBACK FRIDAY was with Deepa Preeti Natarajan who guided us with ethnobotany to how we can be better plant stewards and natural dyers. Watch the video recording here: Deepa has been the Program Coordinator for the University of California Botanical Garden at Berkeley for the past 15 years having the unique opportunity to transform her love of plants into a year-round series of classes, workshops, exhibits, tours, and events. Along this journey she developed a passion for natural dyes and sustainable fashion and was introduced to the field of ethnobotany. In 2018 she traveled to England to pursue … Read more

Video From LIVE FEEDBACK FRIDAY: Elena Phipps

This week’s FEEDBACK FRIDAY was with Elena Phipps whose talk focused on the art history of cochineal. It also broke all of our FEEDBACK FRIDAY records with 516 RSVPS? Go Elena! Watch the video recording here: Elena’s presentation traced the origins of this special red color in the Americas and its role in global trade from the 16th century. during her extensive time at the Metropolitan Museum which she says “allowed her to develop a broad view of the range of textiles that had been dyed with cochineal, and working with scientists at the museum, we were able to test … Read more

Video From LIVE FEEDBACK FRIDAY: TATTER Library

This week’s FEEDBACK FRIDAY was with Jordana Munk Martin, Founder of the TATTER Library and it was so personal and beautiful and made our hearts explode. Thank you Jordana. Watch the video HERE. Links you should click to on the TATTER site: –TATTER Journal –Amazing TATTER classes & lectures –The Barbara Walker Knitting Project -Info on Jordana’s grandmother Edith R. Wyle -Info on Carol Westfall whose weaving book collection is at TATTER Shop all our blue here. From the site: “BLUE, The TATTER Textile Library, opened its doors in June of 2017. Serving as both an interactive, ongoing art-installation as … Read more

Video From LIVE FEEDBACK FRIDAY: Honeyfolk Clothing

This week’s FEEDBACK FRIDAY was with Heidi Iverson, Founder of Honeyfolk Clothing. Heidi was one of the original founders of Fibershed, an organization we love and respect so much. Watch the video recording here: Honeyfolk Clothing is entirely handcrafted by Heidi Iverson, in her studio surrounded by second-growth Redwoods in Western Sonoma County. She also devotes time to various forms of textile arts, primarily knitting and natural dyeing with plants and flowers she hand gathers or cultivates. While cutting pieces for the collection, all smaller off-cuts are set aside and re-used in various projects that require small pieces, like quilts … Read more