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Sunday Visit: Evolving Fibershed With Rebecca Burgess

Today’s Sunday Visit is with one of our fiber and dye heroes, Rebecca Burgess. Rebecca is the executive director of Fibershed and the author of Harvesting Color as well as Fibershed-Growing a Movement of Farmers, Fashion Activists, and Makers for a New Textile Economy. She’s also a seasoned weaver and natural dyer. About a decade ago, Rebecca had the idea to develop a project focused on wearing clothing made from fiber grown, woven, and sewn within her bioregion of North Central California. From the Fibershed book: “As she began to network with ranchers, farmers, and artisans, she discovered that even … Read more

Gamma Folk’s Lily Piyathaisere on Natural Dyes, Boy Scouts and Brooklyn

We always love seeing how Botanical Colors can be applied to so many different mediums through the hands of talented artists. Brooklyn-based Lily Piyathaisere of Gamma Folk is new to our natural dye family and we are pretty crazy about her jewelry. Lily says her vision is to “combine traditional techniques with thoughtful, statement jewelry. Influenced by folk art, mysticism, pop culture and the bauhaus, Gamma Folk is a celebration of aesthetics, experiments in technique and the preservation of craft.  ” All pieces are made by hand in Brooklyn, New York. We caught up with her recently to see what got … Read more

Sunday Visit: Regional Couture With Celeste Malvar-Stewart

This week on Sunday Visit, we catch up with Celeste Malvar-Stewart, a Filipino American fashion and fiber artist who focuses on sustainable design, emphasizing the importance of slow fashion within one of the most harmful industries. Celeste works with Ohio family farms to obtain luxury wool and alpaca fiber to create her hand-felted textiles and ethereal couture fashion, using all natural materials; emphasizing the unique and beautiful textures through natural dyes that she grows, forages, and obtains from Botanical Colors! She has exhibited her work in various museums and galleries, and is widely published both nationally and internationally. Celeste is … Read more

Q & A: Round Up of Scouring + Mordanting 101

Mordanting and scouring should be at the top of your things-to-do list before natural dyeing. Botanical Colors Founder Kathy Hattori recently took on as many questions as was humanly possible to clarify the processes. Before reading, also please see our How-To Scour and How-To Mordant pages. Scouring Questions If I use untreated and unbleached fabric, is it a must to scour the fabric or is washing it enough? If you mean by “untreated” that it has never been scoured, then you should scour. If untreated and unbleached means it is also prepared for dyeing (PFD or RFD), then you can … Read more

Mordant Monday: brat

Using weld and indigo, you can get awfully close to this new, exciting color! This is the basic recipe Start with a mordanted cotton bandana, soak it in warm water for 30 minutes to thoroughly wet it out, and dip in a very light indigo vat. You want to lightest, sky blue shade. Let it oxidize and rinse well. Next, measure 8% weld extract, 2% calcium carbonate and 2% soda ash. If you want to know the dry weight, the bandana is about 34 grams. Carefully dissolve and mix the ingredients together. Add the dye mix to a dye pot … Read more

Mordant Monday: Q&A

Mordant Monday this week is all about questions: some are mordanting questions and others are the victims of spellcheck. I changed my mind How do I change a mordant after the fact? I have some wool and cotton fabrics with alum on them but I really want to have them mordanted with iron instead. Can I remove the alum and start with an iron base? Answer: Alum mordants are very durable and long-lasting bonds, and while there are a few substances that can weaken or damage them, using them would probably also damage the fabric and we don’t recommend this … Read more

FEEDBACK FRIDAY: This Week in Natural Dye Questions

This week: What’s the difference between green and blue indigo and perfecting natural dye paint thickening

You Asked, Kathy Answered: Adding More Iron To A Ferrous Indigo Vat

We get lots of emails from customers about challenges with dyeing and needing Botanical Colors’ President Kathy Hattori’s help. Why not share the learning so we can all benefit? From our inboxes to you, it’s simple: You Asked, Kathy Answered. Email [email protected] with your plea for help! YOU ASKED: I made a 1-2-3 ferrous indigo vat, which I have done before with success. This time, I checked the vat after a few days and a good stir, and it seemed weak – there was some reduction, but it wasn’t very strong for the amount of indigo I had put in. … Read more

FEEDBACK FRIDAY: This Week in Natural Dye Questions

This week: Expanding color profiles with Symplocos and “aluminum potassium sulfate?”

FEEDBACK FRIDAY: This Week in Natural Dye Questions

This week: Iron contamination, stainless steel dye pots and overnight in the dye bath? Hmmmm…