I thought the title might be a bit more catchy than ‘Dye and Eat’.  But that is just what I did this week.

Let me retrace my steps a little.  A few weeks ago I attended the AGM of our guild Feltmakers Ireland (https://feltmakersireland.com/).  Our Keynote speaker was a lady named Malú Colorún.  Malú who is originally from Mexico is the co-founder of Fibreshed in Ireland.  The Fibershed movement originated many years ago in California and now has affiliates worldwide. It is a not for profit movement which promotes a virtuous circle in clothing production.  I feel the easiest way to describe this is to show you a screen shot of a table on the main website:

If you would like to find out more about the organisation, you might like to visit the main website at https://fibershed.org/mission-vision/.  You will find a directory of all affiliates under one of the drop down menus, there may be one in your area.

Malú also runs a natural dyeing business.  Here is a link to her website: https://talu.earth/the-team.   She collaborates with a number of knitwear designers based in Ireland and also provides a bespoke dyeing service to businesses and individuals.  Along with this, she runs regular workshops in natural dyeing and when she mentioned this at our AGM, I just knew I had to attend.  That was a few weeks ago  and it turned into one fun evening, so much fun and great learning that I want to share it with you.

There were six students, including my eldest son, an engineer and software designer who in his spare time is apprenticing as a Beekeeper.  It makes my heart swell to see how in tune with nature he is. 

The session was a busy 3 hours and Malú had scoured and mordanted the materials and started extracting the dyes before we arrived to speed up time the process.    Our first lesson was immersion dyeing and we were each given a skein of wool and a linen triangular scarf to dye.  We had two dye pots to choose from; avocado which yielded a beautiful pink shade and sage which had a lovely yellow colour.  The group was lovely and bonded very quickly, Malú is a super facilitator.  Once we had our materials on the heat, Malú sat us down and explained the processes of scouring, mordanting and extracting dyes.  We learnt about different fibre composition and how they need to be treated differently to get the best out of the dye.  Here are some photos from the first part of the night.

Then we got hands on experience of eco dyeing.  Malú produced a variety of leaves and skins
for us to work with and we quickly became engrossed in laying out our patterns,
and rolling tying up the fabric. Soon they were all added to a pot and left to
steam away while we got to learn our next technique.

There was great excitement when we removed our pieces from the immersion dye.  Quite a few of us had opted to tie dye our materials so it was great to see the results.  Then Malú gave us the option of trying a third technique with our materials.  We could choose to bundle dye them if we liked.  Of course, everyone wanted to have a go!  So we used the same leaves and skins we had used in the eco printing.  I started with my scarf.  I wanted to try the onion skins as I had heard they can produce great results.  To these I added pomegranate and a few leaves, and wrapped it up on itself.  I used much the same with the skein of wool.  Again, they were popped in the steamer.

At that point Erik from Fondita Mestiza arrived with lots of yummy Mexican food for the group. The title of our workshop was Flavour, Stories and Colour – An exploration of dye, textiles and food.   The evening was a collaboration between Erik and Malú.  What a delightful concept!  Erik provided the beautiful food while Malú used the scraps and made it into dye for our workshop. We sat around telling stories and Erik provided some background to the origins of ingredients and dishes served. I should have taken more photos of the food but I didn’t want to tempt you away from the post and have you snacking!

Malú showed us her book of experiments.  It was filled with a colourful array of natural dyes. I took a number of photos of the journal to show you what can be achieved from natural dyes. This is Malú’s personal journey and I thought it only fair to block out her notes as she was so generous to share them with the group. I am sure you will all understand this. So I hope you will enjoy the amazing colours she has achieved in her research. This is only the tip of the iceberg of what was contained within the journal.

We then unfolded all of our samples.  My scarf and skein worked a lot better than my eco printing sample.  I will definitely try the eco printing again as I have access to eucalyptus leaves which I understand practically guarantee success.

It was a memorable and enjoyable evening which left us all biting at the bit to get the pots out. But before I take my leave, I will show you John’s and my dried pieces.