Video From LIVE FEEDBACK FRIDAY: Ice Dyeing with Cara Marie Piazza

This week’s FEEDBACK FRIDAY, (our 50th episode!) was on ice dyeing with natural dye high priestess Cara Marie Piazza. Watch the video recording here: Cara Marie Piazza creates one of a kind textiles only using natural dye stuffs such as botanicals, plant matter, minerals, non-toxic metals and food wastes. She treats her fabrics through alchemical dye sessions, ancient shibori techniques and bundle dyeing, transforming each textile into its very own story. She works with both designers and artists to realize their natural dyeing needs as well as creates custom pieces for private clients. Cara teaches workshops on natural dyeing (including … Read more

Construction Techniques with Aboubakar Fofana: Create a Pair of Stripcloth Trousers

Video From LIVE FEEDBACK FRIDAY: Indigo Master Dyer Aboubakar Fofana

This week’s FEEDBACK FRIDAY was with indigo master dyer and multidisciplinary artist Aboubakar Fofana. Aboubakar is based in Mali and France and updated us on his latest projects including cotton cultivation in Mali. He also talked about his indigo farm, exhibits and the workshops he is teaching with Botanical Colors this spring and summer. Watch the video recording here: Shop the Finimugu (Malian Strip Cloth) Aboubakar talked about and showed us beautiful images of here. If you don’t know indigo master dyer Aboubakar Fofana, he is a multidisciplinary artist and designer whose working mediums include calligraphy, textiles and natural dyes. … Read more

Video From LIVE FEEDBACK FRIDAY: Textile Conservation + Natural Dyes

This week’s FEEDBACK FRIDAY was on textile conservation and preservation using natural dyes. Watch the video recording here: We were joined by Robin Hanson who has managed the textile conservation lab at the Cleveland Museum of Art for the past 21 years, Nancy Britton, Conservator Emeritus at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and whose specialty is upholstery conservation, and Kate Smith, owner of Eaton Hill Textile Works and director of the Marshfield School of Weaving in Marshfield, Vermont. Many thanks to Robin for coordinating this powerhouse presentation of women working hard for years in their respective fields. … Read more

Organic Hopi Black Sunflower Seeds

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

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

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