Description: Here’s your chance to cook up dyes from plants you haven’t experienced before. I’ll bet everyone has a plant that is just begging to be cooked up into dye — so let’s try it out. To start off, particularly for anyone not familiar with plant dyes, Pat will show how to achieve a range of colors from goldenrod and onion using different mordant baths on wool. She will also make an indigo bath for a range of greens and blue. These dyebaths can be shared by the class.
Pat will supply three mordants — iron, alum, copper — and the tannin bath for any vegetable fiber, as well as tongs and a few pairs of silicone gloves for handling hot pots. If you wish to take your dye home, bring suitable containers. Extra pots will be available for your use in class. Bring bags to take home wet or damp fiber.
Each person should wear clothes or an apron to protect clothing, gloves to protect hands in hot water and plastic bags to carry wet fibers home. Bring about 8 ounces of fiber. Skeins should be loosely tied in several places. If you bring unspun fleece, it should be loose in a mesh bag.
Class size is limited to 10.
Class Fee: $50 CVFG Members / $60 Non-members.
Materials Fee: $15, payable directly to Pat during class. Pat’s book, Gardening and Foraging Natural Dyes, will be available for purchase for $30.
Day & Time: Saturday, November 9, 2024 from 10 am–4 pm with a self-determined lunch break.
Location: Beaver Dam Farm in Fluvanna County, home of Kimberly Radcliffe. There is cover, so the class will go on rain or shine. Bring a lunch. Address will be in your registration confirmation.
Skill level: Open to all.
Homework: Please bring a minimum of 8 ounces of plant material you wish to make into a dye bath. More is better, especially if you plan to share the dye. Generally, the recipe is equal or double the amount of plant to fiber.
Pat Brodowski, well-known as the former Vegetable Gardener at Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello, has given natural dye workshops for fiber arts groups and museums in the Mid-Atlantic area over 20 years. In 2022, she researched the plant histories and dye methods of 57 dye plants to grow, forage, or purchase and published them in a manual to encourage experimentation. Her workshops include plant lore from antiquity to link today to dyers long ago.