Dyeing for Inspiration - a Summertime Workshop in Sorrento BC

It is time to start thinking about a fun workshop for this summer ... Here is information about one that I will be co-teaching with Thomas Roach at Sorrento Centre (on the shores of Shuswap Lake in the Interior of British Columbia). . . Class days are July 10-14, 2017

DYEING FOR INSPIRATION
with Thomas Roach & Kathy Kinsella

 Fibre Artists Thomas Roach and Kathy Kinsella have teamed up to offer an inspirational course you'll be “dyeing” to take this summer!

Come and experience eco printing, indigo dyeing and rust printing on fabric and paper.
We will collect leaves from the gardens and use them to transfer the colours and shapes of nature to paper and fabric. We will encourage rusty metals to make marks for us and we will dip into an indigo vat that produces magical blues.

Woven into our week together will be the simple pleasure of some hand stitching inspired by the intriguing and inspirational results of our dyeing and printing. We hope that this will provide inspiration for future explorations. No experience necessary – come explore and play with us!
- See more at: http://sorrento-centre.bc.ca/2017-0709b-dyeing-for-inspirat…

Sorrento Centre offers great accommodation (camping, RVs, cabins or lodge rooms with amenities) and wonderful meals or, if you live locally and would like to come as a day student, you are welcome to do so.  Workshop times are 9:45-12:45 Monday to Friday with the possibility of an afternoon or two of open studio time. The afternoons are free for you to enjoy the beach, hike and explore the area.

Flour Paste Resists

It is always fun to create new samples for workshops and this week I am working on some samples of flour resist fabrics.  This is one of the techniques that I will be teaching at Sorrento Centre later in April.

The first step is to mix up the flour and water paste and apply it to the fabric. It will need to dry for a day (maybe more, if it is humid).

I will show you the next step in a day or two . . .

Printing fabric

Last month I attended a three-day workshop at Sorrento Centre where Catherine Nicholls was teaching a course on working with thickened dyes.  It was a fantastic three days of playing with fabric and dyes under Catherine's excellent guidance.

We worked on designs first and then translated those designs into screen printing and block making techniques. I will post more about the block printing another day.

This is my silk screen that is prepared for breakdown screen printing ...

And this is the metre of fabric that I printed from that screen ...

It is a gorgeous piece of fabric and I am giving lots of thought as to how I will use it.

Dyeing with Indigo

I am taking a workshop this week at Sorrento Centre that focuses on dyeing fabric with natural indigo dye. It is such fun to be a participant in the class and to have fun of playing with fabric for hours each day.

This workshop is led by Thomas Roach who is a talented textile artist from Vancouver and he is preparing vats of dye for us and teaching us all about indigo as well as shibori stitching techniques. I have never worked with indigo before and I love the way it turns from green to blue once it comes out of the vat and hits the air ... who knew!! For two days we have been creating samples on cotton and silk and tomorrow we will start work on a larger piece, a personal prayer cloth, using some of these techniques.

Here is a photo of Thomas and a couple of the participants dipping their samples into the vat . . .

I will try to remember to take some pictures of our samples and post them later ... they are gorgeous!