workshop Archives - Botanical Colors

A Nerd’s Guide to Mordanting at Sanborn Mills

A Nerd’s Guide to Mordanting at Sanborn Mills This is the nerd’s guide to mordants – what they are, why they are important and how they are used in natural dyeing. Everyone wants to create long-lasting and beautiful plant color and the best way to do that is to mordant properly. The class will experiment with the most popular plant-based tannins and alum accumulators, mineral salt mordants and other binders to see the effects on animal and plant fibers. Each mordant variable will be dyed so that we can see results and we will build a reference folio for students to … Read more

Sara Buscaglia Of Farm & Folk Teaches Applique Dream Quilts

Sara Buscaglia of wildly popular Farm & Folk has captured our imagination with her beautifully designed quilts and color work using natural dyes that she grows on her farm in Durango, Colorado. Each piece tells a story about her commitment to farming, land stewardship, and the joy and dignity of hand work. We are so pleased to have her return and teach a 5-day quilting workshop in Seattle with us in February 2025! This year’s focus will be on applique to create a quilt approximately 30×30 inches. Applique is a needlework technique where fabric and motifs are stitched onto whole or pieced cloth, allowing the quilter to create beautiful, free and figurative designs on the quilt. Each participant will work with a palette of naturally dyed color created especially for this workshop. Sara will demonstrate several applique methods, guide color choices and motifs. Join us for a wonderful 5-day creative studio session dyeing fabrics, designing colorways and making hand-stitched quilts!

Sunday Visit: The Storytellers Studio Coat with Jody Alexander

For Sunday Visit, Botanical Colors sits down for an interview with a luminary in the natural dye, textile and art world. This week we visit with the inimitable Jody Alexander who has an upcoming workshop with us! Grab a cup of tea and settle in to learn about someone you never knew! Catch up on all our Sunday Visits here. We are so excited to host you this October! Can you tell us a little bit about the origin of the Studio Storyteller Coat? I love the ethos of mending and repair as a thread that ties your work together. We … Read more

Video From FEEDBACK FRIDAY: Jody Alexander

Last week on FEEDBACK FRIDAY we had mixed media artist Jody Alexander. In 2020, Jody made some life changes so that she could swim in lakes, and in 2023 she decided to make her open water swimming experiences into an art project. Aqua Lab is a work in progress that attempts to define the allure of open water swimming through the collection of data that includes water and air temperature, earth pigments surrounding the lakes, and underwater photos to capture water color. Watch the recording below. Take a class with Jody! Stitch, Patch, Dye: A Bag Making Workshop with Jody … Read more

August Natural Dye Workshop With Tolt Yarn & Wool

EILEEN FISHER Learning Lab Event With Botanical Colors Indigo!

Shibori is a centuries-old Japanese method of dyeing cloth by binding, stitching, folding, twisting, and compressing. In this workshop featuring all Botanical Colors indigo dyes, participants will learn these basic techniques through demonstration and hands-on application. Utilizing recycled and reclaimed materials, participants will apply these decorative techniques to create their own unique piece. Tuition is $115 and includes materials, use of all tools, coffee, tea, and light snack not to mention just being in the amazing and beautiful EILEEN FISHER Learning Lab in Irvington. RSVP on the EILEEN FISHER Learning Lab page here! Instructor Jean Wasil is a graduate of … Read more

Brooklyn Fashion+Design Accelerator Workshop (In Pictures!)

At our Easy Printing Techniques Using Natural Dyes workshop at the Brooklyn Fashion+Design Accelerator, attendees learned how to print with non-toxic and food-grade ingredients and how to explore simple screen printing and surface effects. Our final project was printing on a California Cloth Foundry t-shirt and wow the results were pretty amazing. Check out the results below!

New Mexico Workshop: Natural Dyeing in Albuquerque

Join us in Albuquerque at Village Wools for a Natural Dye Workshop April 24-25, 2015. Las Arañas Spinners and Weavers Guild was formed in 1971 by a group of spinners and weavers in the Albuquerque, New Mexico area to provide education and learning experiences for its members and increase the awareness of and appreciation for fiber arts throughout New Mexico and beyond. For more info and to RSVP, go here.

Woad Workshop and Master Class with Denise Lambert

Join us for a very special workshop this Fall in Seattle! Learn the ancient art of Woad dyeing from master dyer Denise Simeon Lambert, founder of Bleu de Lectoure in southwest France. Denise’s passion for traditional French Blue revitalized woad dyeing and cultivation in France and brought back the medieval techniques of the traditional woad vat, modernizing it for current day use. Denise will be joining us from Lectoure France and this promises to be a very special class. For our workshop, we will be gathering at Magnuson Park and setting up our woad vats outside in the Garden Amphitheater. … Read more