Ok, so it was a rocky start… the teacher is super motivated, incredibly knowledgeable, and ridiculously enthusiastic! In fact, she has curated nearly 8 readings a week, shared many alternate recipes for all things related natural dyes, and prepared multiple video-demos.
If I was a Fibres major with nothing but fibres to think about, I’d be over-the-moon! HOWEVER… I’m not! I don’t have the 10+ hours to read and follow in self-study on every subject I have a passing interest in.
Don’t get me wrong. I appreciate her enthusiasm and offerings, but I need more structure right now… Zoom is also a challenge in this, as we are only watching, not doing hands live.
Anyway, I’ll get there…
I made a few dyes: Red Cabbage, Madder, Tumeric, Goldenrod… and a few mordants: Soy & Alum… plus the iron water… which I’ll need to redo with purified water… The technician told me that our local water is too polluted with other metals and minerals… I’ll try it again today and let you know how it works done the road.
The New Renaissance Mindset 
Experiments are usually worth while. I’ve never seen before this technique of using canning jars as mini dye baths. Very efficient.
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Necessity is the mother of invention, or so they say… I have so little time to devote to this course, that I need to find every possible time saver… We were given the option of doing dye baths in several ways: hot-simmer, cold-soak, warm-sun-bath, etc… I considered that the oxidation of an open bath might affect certain colours, especially when using iron-water post-mordants and decided it was worth working without oxidation… as long as I documented my work process. The end results have been interesting and unexpected. You will see more on this in future posts… it’s an on-going exploration process…
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I look forward to seeing more.
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Thank you!
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