sassafras wall hanging

i promised someone a bit ago that i would post images of this leaf pounded wall hanging

 done as a demo piece for my appalachian arts students a few years ago

 

young tender sassafrass leaves

 a single-, a double- and a triple-lobed

 were pounded onto a piece of prewashed muslin

after the piece dried it was soaked in salt water for about an hour then rinsed

a micron pen was used to add details to the leaf pounding

everything was ironded to heat set the colors

 a patchwork border of stash fabrics was sewn around the leaf pounding

 and then the entire panel was hand quilted

both the leaf contours

and concentric pattern around them

the color has survived

several years hanging on my hearth

as well as hand washing

and line drying

with no signs of fading

School, in Natural Color

Again this year I am mentoring a student's Senior Exit Project. Jordan, the young lady I am working with, is studying Natural Dyes. The week before school started we met in the classroom with a friend and fellow crafter, Cassie Dixon, to begin working on the physical product component of her project. Using hot plates and camping stoves, we did several dye pots, including cochineal, brazilwood, logwood, marigold, walnut, broom sedge, turmeric, annetto, osage orange, and indigo. She treated wool yarn samples from our homespun with various mordants before dyeing to see the effects they produced on color. Vinegar and ammonia after baths were also investigated. Jordan also dyed cotton, linen and silk in one of the dye baths to see the difference in how the fibers take the dye.

At the end of the first two days she had a nice collection of dye samples to include in her product. Jordan was excited with the results she got, and Cassie and I had a fun day working with a student who was both enthusiastic and eager to learn. I think we learned as well.

This week, Jordan helped me teach indigo dyeing to her classmates in my Appalachian Arts & Crafts class. Working in the courtyard that adjoins the room so we didn't ruin the newly waxed floors, we worked most of two class periods. Some students brought in cotton t-shirts to dye and others used cotton muslin I had on hand in the classroom. They used traditional tie dyeing techniques to create resist areas in their fabric. 

"Cool" and "Awesome" reactions to the magic of indigo oxidizing from green to blue were such fun. Jordan did a good job explaining the process to the remainder of the class; peer teaching is wonderful! 

Everything dried overnight, and the kids were really proud of their results (one student was absent for the photo).

This week Jordan is continuing to experiment with dyestuffs. She currently has coreopsis and goldenrod pots ready for fibers. On Friday we also put in some more walnuts brought in from another students trees, and on Monday we will be making a bloodroot dyebath as well. These will be used to dye reed for baskets.

Needless to say this is my favorite class.

I get to teach and learn alongside my kids.

School just doesn't get much better than this.

Dying Almost Killed Me

Well, never let it be said that dying is effortless. Two days of gathering plants, two days of mordanting, four long days of preparing dyes and then actually dying, standing most of the day on these concrete/tile floors ... horrendous on the old knees, but, after almost two weeks of work, the Appalachian Arts natural dying project results are finally in. I tried to get all the colors in one shot, but the photo just doesn't do them justice. If you click on the photo and look at the larger version you get a better idea of the color. We only purchased the indigo for the blues; everything else is local plants. There are still lots of other plants I want to try, but a lot are not ready to gather yet, and I would also like to do overdyes for new colors, so---at a later date, we will try again. This was a great practical chemistry lesson; the kids were very interested in why one plant gave such different results with different mordants. What a great excuse to pull my chemistry background into my art classes (my original degree is science; I taught Chemistry for five years). All in all, this has been a great project. I don't think the kids will forget this one.

Prepare to Dye

Last week we began our natural dying lessons. We gathered yellowroot (top photo), curly dock plant & roots, blackberry shoots and wild cherry bark around the school grounds. I brought bloodroot and roots off my eastern red cedar from home. A friend had collected marigold blooms and froze them for me last summer and my independent study student and I had gathered and dried goldenrod last fall. Cassie donated black walnuts for the dye pots. The only dyestuff we purchased was indigo. The first two days of dying we cooked down our dye liquors (bottom photo). The third day was dedicated to mordanting the wool. After all the prep work we were really excited to get down to the actual dying. This has been wonderful for the kids. People were coming into the room following their noses to the strange smells emanating from our pots with "Phew, what's that smell?" heard from more than one passerby. The kids would just patiently explain what they were doing and laugh about the "smelly" comments. Results of the lesson to follow...