On day 2 of the workshop we went out to Bells Bend to gather dye plants and to show the Freedom Quilting Bee the dye farm.
Sarah gathered some sumac for us to try using as a dye. It has a lot of tannin in it which is acidic and may work well to use almost as a mordant.
Sarah began explaining the farm process and showed everyone the sunflowers and the indigo.
Here is some indigo, it needs so much watering.
This is a row or so of woad which is another dye plant that makes an indigo color. The difference is you need to process more of it to get color, the japanese indigo has more pigment in it, therefore you would need less of the plant than woad.
We are gathering it to extract a dye for the next day.
On the left is a woad leaf and on the right is dock (which we will try to get a brown color from). I just wanted to point out the difference in the leaf pattern (woad is sharper and pointier lines) and also show the woad blue coming out from the parts of the leaf that are dry.
Hollyhock is also growing a bit at the farm. The flowers do not flower until the second year. They can make pinks, purples, or browns depending on the color of the flower.
This is weld which makes a yellow.
The marigolds are growing too.
The Natural Resources Conservation Service came by the land while we were there.
After we got back to the shop we hung the fabrics we dyed the other day. This dye is madder root.
This is cochineal (the bug dye).
This is black walnut.
Another thing we worked on was gathering all the sumac berries and then boiling them to extract the dye.
Also, we needed to chop up the dock that was collected.
From the Hopi Dye Sunflower bath that we started the day before, we dried the leftover sunflower seeds because they can be planted and grown.
This cochineal was dipped in indigo to make this purple color.
At the end of the day we did shibori patterns and dipped our wrapped fabrics in indigo.
