Wild Textiles – foraging for seasonal natural dyes

This is such a lovely seasonal natural dyeing workshop – we get in touch with the beautiful plants & flowers around us and learn how they can make such gorgeous natural colours.

Every season these change with the weather, climate, soil…so it’s always an exciting workshop – totally immersive and full of surprises.

On the first day we mordant our fabric – students are encouraged to bring along different weights of fabric to experiment with. And then we take a long walk to forage for plants, fruits & leaves, barks.

We always forage sustainably and come back in time for a nice veggie lunch!

In the afternoon it’s all about getting witchy and brewing up our plants, we make up to 40 dye pots and  just before we leave for the day we add our fabric, leaving it to steep in the hot dye bath overnight.

This is SLOOOOW textiles after all … in the morning we check on our fabrics and how the colour has developed overnight. There are lots of revelations, maybe some disappointments but also some wonderful surprises.

We record our findings using recipe sheets so that everyone has a dye book to take away. And we experiment with different mordants and after baths. Students choose the colours they love and maybe dye a bigger piece of fabric to take away with them.

I’m really keen that students experience how generous plants can be and how one plant, like rhubarb root can give so many shades. I love the fact that students leave this workshop feeling confident enough to experiment with the plants, fruits & flowers where they live.

Building your own special relationship with your own natural habitat – wherever you live, brings so much respect for the natural world and it’s abundance. I hope this is something every student takes away with them