Hi guys, I created this thread for us to post any conference or classes related to natural dyes or natural dye extracts.  Please add to this thread as you run across classes!  Deb Mc (where it was 104 degrees yesterday)

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Wed, 08/11/2010 - 14:07

debmcclintock

The Earth's Palette conference is running again in Taos, New Mexico in late September.  The Taos Wool Festival sponsors have picked up this conference as part of their conference.  If you go to their link and click on the Earth's Palette link you'll see the preliminary schedule.  They also have some of the natural dye workshops listed.  This is a great event in a beautiful area of New Mexico!  http://www.taoswoolfestival.org/

Tue, 09/21/2010 - 01:15

debmcclintock

to Taos!  Is anyone else going to Earth's Palette?  We can have a mini-Weavo meet up at the Monday "poster session".  I'll  be the one wearing my Weavo pin and I'll have the kid's natural dye color quiz game.

Here's the link to the schedule. 

Tue, 09/28/2010 - 05:01

debmcclintock

Hi folks, for those of you who cannot attend Earth's Palette in Taos here is a short report on the pre-conference plant walk and Day 1.  I have also posted project photos here for plant walk and here for day 1.

First, the Taos Wool Festival committee has commited to supporting the conference and ensuring that natural dye classes are offered annually.  The conference might take a different form from year to year but they are committed to it for the long term to help build interest.  Thank you! 

The pre-conference event was a plant walk by Katy Blanchard, 6 of us tramped along trails and roads to find dyeplants and hear about their preparation and medical purposes.  Katy also shared her dyed skeins with us and showed us how she used them in her hand knitted vests.  My new terms I came out of this walk was:

"Arial" - you harvest all the plant from the ground up and "Flowering Top" you pick the top 4-6 inches of the plant, both of these terms will mean more to you when you are looking at a plant and trying to decide how much to take for color.

The conference opened with Pamela Feldman - Getting the Best Color from Ground Madder Root - 1st she grew her own madder root and used it in her experiments.  Her experiment included about 52 10 gram skeins and covered a myriad of combinations of mordants, soaking times, post mordants and other options.  I believe she will be writing this up in the Turkey Red Journal, a great on-line resource.

Next we had a poster session which allowed all to show some projects that were of interest to others, my personal favorite was Rufus & Karen Dye of Portland, Oregan who had a great demo set up of their experiments with pre-and post- treatments of annatto

This was followed by a talk by Donna Brown - Researching the many Mordanting Myths - Donna talked thru her experiments with mordanting for both yarn skeins and fabric.  She went thru the mordanting for both protein and cellulose fiber. One of the interesting facts she brought up was the different # of dye sites on different fibers. Although it even varies within each individual category it broke down by the fact that wool has 1000 sites, silk has 100 sites and cotton 10 sites.  This helps one understand why you want to mordant properly to ensure that a dye molecule finds a site and stays there.  She also went thru a "new" historic twist by a french dyer master that uses a mordant solution which is different from our % wof.  This is also written up in the Red Turkey Journal.

Finally, Diane de Souza presented on Dyeing with Natural Extracts, this was a good primer for folks who were unfamilar with natural dye extracts.  She talked thru the pros and cons of extracts compared with dyestuffs.  One of my key take aways in that talk was to allow my skein to sit in the dye solution overnight, spin it to remove excess water and then allow it to hang and dry before rinsing.  Diane believes that allows the dye to finish bonding and that you have less rinse out.

tomorrow, we talk Cuzco textiles, dye gardening, natural dyeing for long term demonstarations and have a grand finale with Dorothy Beebee on the art of mushrooms.

and my braincells are already stretched!

Mon, 12/27/2010 - 14:47

debmcclintock

I would not win a timely journalist award...but I loaded some photos from the Textile Society Symposium Natural Dye held in October 2010.  The colors and concepts were wonderful and I appreciated hearing the anthropologist and museum curator point of view on how natural dyes are documented and investigated.  I have loaded a link direct to this particular page but you might want to look at the archives to see what my dyepot yielded this season.

http://www.debmcclintock.com/Site/Debs_Dyepot_Blog/Entries/2010/10/6_Entry_1.html

Happy New Year and SAFE travels to those of you in the Northeast United States!

Deb McClintock