Dyeing in the Blue Mountains

I've been absent for a while as I was busy getting ready and organised to leave home for 3 weeks.

Katoomba sunset, looking down Megalong Valley

I've been staying with my son and his fiancee.in Katoomba while I'm attending workshops at the Blue Mountains Contextart Art Forum, held at the Korowal School in Hazelbrook.  Being able to enjoy these beautiful surroundings and spend time in the extensive gardens was a bonus of the workshops

Over the weekend I did eco-dyeing using plant material from the nearby bush, with Kirsten Ingmar and Trace Willans.  They have very different methods, but both were great tutors and I had good fun, made some lovely new friends..........hello Pat and Christine.......and learnt a lot.  

  Pat and I collaborated on leaf dyeing this cotton tshirt by the bundling method.  Trace showed us how to use egg yolk to enhance the colour and print on cotton, by adding protein to the fabric. This would work on any cellulose fibre....linen, bamboo, rame etc.  We dyed the tshirt in a pot of mountain devil...a local native plant...mordanted with copper.  Note the green on the neckline where the dye has reacted with  perfume on the shirt.

 Back view, love that great string line pattern

 Leaf detail

Close up of string line

I didn't take photos of the bundling and wrapping process, but Trace has a great tutorial on her blog if you'd like to try it.

I did these samples using various shibori style techniques and chemical mordants in a variety of plant based dyes.

 Pole wrapped silk dyed in mountain devil, copper mordant.  It's more a green than the picture shows.

 Shibori folded raw silk, clamped and dyed between wooden blocks in bark with a copper mordant.

Silk georgette bundled with coreopsis flowers, dyed in onion skins with an alum mordant

Highlights of the two days

I'll be back again to post about the basketry workshop I'm doing all this week with Wendy Golden.  

Basketcases

Firstly I'd like to say thankyou to everyone who commented on my last post, and left lovely messages farewelling Freya. It feels very different now there are only 3, and the others have been unusually quiet....realising something is different perhaps.

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I went to a basketmaking workshop yesterday.  There were 10 of us, and we were all new to it.  I've wanted to learn basketmaking for ages, and since I'm also booked into a week long workshop next month, I thought it was a good opportunity to get a feel for it.

These were all made by the tutor, Jill Bose, who has been making baskets for many years.

This is one of my 'efforts'...now that it's dried, I can see where it needs more work.

My other creation.  I could damp this again and push it into a more upright shape, but I quite like it like this.  The orangey-brown leaves are philodendron, with the lighter coloured banana leaf woven through as an accent.

 

This is the very beginning, getting the base flat.  Dried banana leaf is woven around spokes of thin canes that fall from the palm tree after fruiting.


Ripe berries on the tree



Stems dry out after the berries are finished, and the whole thing drops from the tree...to be collected and made into baskets. An interestingly sculptural piece on it's own.

Getting the left to right and behind cross over action right

 

The flat base has to be held firmly in your lap to start the shaping of the sides.  I could've used a couple more pairs of hands at times.



Lajla's  finished basket.  Despite being given the same materials and instructions the finished baskets all looked very different, as we added out own touch.

Jill, the tutor, starting the framework for the large open weave basket

Hard at work



A banana leaf basket made by the tutor

We shared good food

Now that I have some idea of what to do, I'm really looking forward to my April workshop, to see how different the two tutors are and hopefully learn different styles and techniques. For this workshop, Jill used easily obtainable tropical plants, whereas the plants and fibres used in the next workshop will be cool temperate climate plants, and so will be very different. 

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