Video Recording: Intro to Fresh Leaf Indigo Dyeing – Blender, Salt & Tataki-Zome

Description

Enjoy this (pre-recorded) video class with the amazing Britt Boles of Seaspell Fiber for Intro to Fresh Leaf Indigo Dyeing: Blender, Salt & Tataki-Zome.

Do you have a Japanese Indigo (Persicaria tinctoria) patch and aren’t quite sure what to do with it? Britt Boles has suggestions for using the fresh leaf in a number of ways to extract beautiful colors including a lovely violet from the fresh plants. She experiments with various fibers and techniques that you can try with your own indigo!

In this Intro to Fresh Leaf Indigo Dyeing: Blender, Salt & Tataki-Zome, Britt will demo multiple ways to use fresh indigo to extract seafoam blues, emerald greens, and indirubin purples with various natural fibers.

We’ll start with a brief history of the plant, growing and harvesting tips, and demo 3 methods.

Who is this class for?
This class is for all growers from backyard plots to large scale farmers of Persicaria tinctoria (Japanese Indigo). Feel free to relax and view class as lecture style, but if you’d like to learn along live, you’ll need access to fresh plants. Britt recommends 5-10 plants for the best experience.

Participation guidelines The purchase of this online workshop and document download is for 1 person and the link to the recorded video is for the purchaser’s use only. Please respect the artist’s expertise and generosity and don’t share or distribute her material or content without express written permission from both Britt Boles and Botanical Colors. We appreciate your cooperation.

What will we create?
We’ll dive into seafoam blender blues, turquoise salt mash, and Tataki-zome leaf prints. Three hands-on applications for the freshest alive blue hues…and a bonus! indirubin-pickled Indigo (left over salt mash), fresh overdye over other garden colors, and fresh lake making (with leftover blender liquid).

Supply list:
Approximately 5-10 Persicaria tinctoria Japanese Indigo plants
Journal/notebook & pen
Blender
Scissors
Salt
Large bowl
Hammer, mallet, or a palm-sized smooth rock
Small bucket
Various scoured protein fibers(silk, wool or blends) and cellulose fibers(cotton, hemp, linen, bamboo, etc.)- small/sample size pieces- some dry and some wetted out. Visit our How To page for scouring information
Soy beans (soaked and made into fresh soymilk) or plain, premade commercial soymilk.
Muslin, cheesecloth, or elastic paint strainer bag
Rubber band/string
Ice/icepacks
Water

Optional:
Gloves(if you don’t want stained hands and/or to avoid getting salt in any papercuts;)
Mason jar with lid
Watercolor paper/brush

About Britt:
Britt is founder of the Indigo Pigment Extraction Methods global network, Blue Biographies interview series, and co-founder of Indigofest. She has been nurturing a relationship with indigo for 8 years and brings 20 years of experience as an artist/teacher/musician/poet to her practice. Community color and local source connections are the inspiration for Britt’s work with farmers, schools, and local textile artisans.

Many lovingly call Britt an “indigo doula,” for her patience and love for the indigo plant and bringing its color into this world. In this Intro to Fresh Leaf Indigo Dyeing: Blender, Salt & Tataki-Zome class, Britt brings that same patience in her teaching and sharing of lots of exciting and helpful information on the nuances of growing, harvesting and producing blue from indigo through the blender and salt method as well as Tataki-zome leaf prints.