My last week in Nashville, Ali took me on a field trip to Knoxville where Dale Liles, wife of the author and natural dye expert Jim Liles, resides. This was a special treat because Jim’s studies and experiments are an important source for the work that Ali and Sarah have been doing and Dale was very open in showing us samples of things Jim worked on and recipes that will help us.
These fabrics are old pockets, the embellishments on them are called chintzes. These were Jim’s passion, he experimented a lot with using different mordants becoming incorporated into the dye pigment vs. putting mordant on the fabric.
Dale is showing us a mug based on Jim’s chintzes. He worked a bit making old traditional costumes for Colonial Williamsburg.
Here are more color experiments of Jim’s.
This is a special cotton that Dale is growing. She spins fibers into yarn and teaches classes.
Ali and Dale
Dale and I
