Online Workshop RECORDING: BACK TO BLACK – Tannin Blacks with Cara Marie Piazza

Description

Have you been interested in learning how to experiment with tannins to make tannin blacks and unlock the elusive secrets to make charcoal, deep black and silvery gray? How about learning the path to create the inkiest navy blues? These exciting colors are the unlikely combination of rather tame neutral shades called tannins that are found in many plants. On their own they make tan, beige, sometimes brown or other quiet hues, but when combined with other dyes like indigo or iron, they really show off! Calm, understated cream shades explode into purple and black with the simple addition of iron. It’s dramatic!

In BACK TO BLACK – Tannin Blacks with Cara Marie Piazza, we will create a series of blacks on both cellulose (plant) and protein (animal) fibers. We will cover fiber preparation and mordants along with best practices to achieve beautiful, dark neutral shades. This is a wonderful way to to learn how to make a variety of black hues for larger projects and create a swatch library of different blacks, deep navy shades, charcoals and grays.

Your instructor will be none other than Cara Marie Piazza, the creator of the dark black Nebula colorway that reminds you of a galaxy far, far away. Being a New Yorker, Cara embraced black as a key color in the natural dye palette and uses it to great advantage and now she is sharing these techniques with you.

You may join the workshop prepared to follow along with Cara, or relax and observe her techniques and instructions and then experiment at your own pace. Cara will be demonstrating with four tannins from Botanical Colors. You can use what you have at home, or purchase the suggested tannins below. Once you learn this technique of swatch building you can continue on with your own library! Send us your photos, we love to see them.

Details

This is an online workshop RECORDING. The workshop will be available until June 15, 2024 and the recording link will be viewable via Vimeo. 

The class is 2.5 hours long.

MATERIALS NEEDED

Natural fabrics such as cotton, wool, silk, hemp and linen. We recommend creating your swatches on the Handwoven Hemp Collection. Cara demonstrates on handwoven hemp towels along with our wool gauze. We also recommend our Handwoven Hemp Irregulars for making swatches. We do NOT cover yarn or clothing dyeing in this workshop.

Please have the following ingredients on hand to start your experiments:

MORDANT  ** These are the smallest sized packages that we carry, please feel free to substitute with what you have at home. You will need approximately 10% Tannin & Mordant of the weight of your dry fabrics. 

• 250g   Aluminum Sulfate  
• 250g Iron or Ferrous Sulfate

TANNINS

• 250g Wattle extract
  100g Gallo Tannin Extract or Ground Oak Galls
• 250g Cutch Extract
• 250g Chestnut Extract 

Natural Dye Extracts – Feel free to substitute with another dye with a warm yellow base, like pomegranate, or with a cool base like Walnut Hulls. 

In the workshop Cara mixes these two extracts, so you can either try her technique, or create swatches with each extract, one by one.

• 100g  Madder Extract (warm hue)
• 100g Logwood Extract (cool hue)

TOOLS

• Stainless steel pot (s) – Other metals are okay too (we will outline variations and options)
• Heat source : Hot plate, Stove top , Fire pit
• Tongs
• 4 Mason jars – wide mouth quart (32 ounce or approx. 1 liter size), or any large heat-resistant canning jar
• Thermometer
• Gram scale
• Chopsticks or a thin spoon to stir your swatches. Reserve one utensil per jar.
• A large rag / scrap piece of fabric for covering surfaces
• Bowls ( we recommend glass or two stainless steel or ceramic )

OPTIONAL

• Henna Indigo Bundle: If you don’t have a vat that is okay! Cara demonstrates how to build blacks with adding a layer of indigo.

After you purchase the class you’ll receive a pdf of this materials list along with a Zoom link for class.

For questions, please email [email protected]