This week’s FEEDBACK FRIDAY was with Liz Spencer also known as The Dogwood Dyer. As a mother to three young children, Liz talked about the evolution and adaptation of her natural dye practice, her insatiable thirst for a deeper understanding of natural dyes and the fine balance of caring for others while carving out time to continue on the endless path of natural dye learning.
Watch the video below.
Liz is an artist, maker, natural dyer, gardener, educator and mother. She has grown and foraged plants for color in various environments including urban and suburban. Her most recent experience of tending a dye garden between rows in a heritage orange grove in southern California on the cusp of an ever sprawling human population has taught her much about water conservation, waste stream tapping and how to push her craft in a more sustainable and environmentally sound manner.
Liz/The Dogwood Dyer, was a venture fellow at the Brooklyn Fashion and Design Accelerator (BF+DA) & holds an MA from the London College of Fashion where her studies focused on sustainable fashion and encouraging biodiversity in animal fiber knitwear. She taught fashion, sustainability, and natural dyeing at Parsons the New School and The Fashion Institute of Technology and has continually shared natural dyes in public workshops since 2012.
Follow Liz on Instagram.
Check out her website.
Liz’s picks for her favorite Botanical Colors dyes:
Stony Creek Colors Indigo, “made by a traceable, woman-owned American business”
Tara Powder– “my go-to tannin of choice for pre-mordanting”
Osage Orange Sawdust: “A U.S. sourced yellow dyestuff and is it also a byproduct of other wood products”
NEXT WEEK…join us May 28th, 9am Pacific, 12pm Eastern for a live Zoom FEEDBACK FRIDAY with Kim Eichler-Messmer, a quilt artist who has been hand-dyeing fabric for nearly 20 years. In 2015 she made the decision to switch from using synthetic dyes to natural dyes and began a journey of learning and discovery, guided by experts in the field such as Catharine Ellis and Michel Garcia. Kim will share her work, how the learning process influences her, and discuss how her work has evolved since making the switch to natural dyes.
RSVP here.
FEEDBACK FRIDAY
If you are not familiar with FEEDBACK FRIDAY, every week, we speak with dyers, artists, scientists and scholars about our favorite topic, natural dyeing and color. Curated by Amy DuFault, Botanical Colors’ Sustainability Director and presented by Botanical Colors’ Founder Kathy Hattori.
We even have our own theme song thanks to musician Jimmie Snider!