Woven Shibori has been printed and is on the shelves of your favorite bookseller (also available at Amazon).  I had some of the first copies delivered to me while teaching natural dye with Joy Boutrup at Penland School of Crafts. It was a fitting place to receive the first books. Joy has helped me over the years to understand the chemistry of natural dyes, various finishing processes, and textiles in general. I could not have completed even the first version of Woven Shibori without her input.

I love teaching at Penland! The studios are beautiful, thoughtfully cared for, and well supplied.  Our students were fabulous and ready for whatever we brought to class. We focused on experiments, observations, and clarifications. The class worked with all natural fibers, and processes included dyeing, printing, and discharge. We were focused on WHY things happen rather than simply how they are done.

Every time I teach with Joy, I  walk away feeling that I’ve taken a  a class as well. We learn from each other as we solve problems, observe results, and identify the best practices for the studio.

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So here is one of the things that FINALLY became clear to me.

I’ve heard/read for years that if animal hide glue was added to the indigo vat, then it would be better for wool or other protein fiber. But WHY? That had never been explained. Did the glue coat the fiber in some way?

The organic sugar vats, that I learned to make from Michel Garcia, use sugars from fruit or plants to create the reduction. Lime (calcium hydroxide) provides the alkalinity.

The vat begins with a quick reduction that eventually becomes a fermentation vat. These vats require a very high pH (about 13-14) in order to start the reduction. If the pH is too low the vat will not reduce. But it does not need a high pH to stay in reduction or for dyeing. A pH of 10 is more suitable for dyeing wool, while cellulose fibers do better with a higher pH of 11. The vat will eventually get to a pH 10 as the sugars create lactic acid in the fermentation but this could take a long time. I’ve had vats take weeks to reach pH 10.

The addition of dissolved animal hide glue (a protein) to the vat will gently lower the pH by absorbing some of the excess lime. The glue will precipitate to the bottom of the vat along with unreduced indigo and sugars. Joy also suggested using natural gelatin (another protein) as an alternative to the glue but we did not have a chance to try this.

It’s very important to insure that the vat is fully reduced before adding anything that will lower the pH. I would wait at least a few days after making the vat before doing this.

I’ve had dyers tell me that the addition of the glue does indeed improve the hand of wool fibers. How much glue? I’m not sure. We started by using a recommendation by Michelle Whipplinger  in her Natural Dye Instruction Booklet. She suggests using the equivalent of approximately 1%  fiber weight. The glue needs to be dissolved in water.  That seemed a reasonable place to start. The key is to watch the pH and observe with both the eye and the hand.

The new edition of Woven Shibori, (Interweave Press) – with a focus on natural dyes – is at the printers right now and will be available by late June! It’s exciting to see the cover and the layout complete. I first wrote Woven Shibori in 2005 and it sold out several years ago. The book has introduced weavers to the concepts and specifics of weaving fabric with woven resist patterning. When the book was originally written I was using many different types of synthetic dyes and layering them in order to accomplish rich color surfaces.

I have now been using natural dyes exclusively for 8 years. My challenge was to develop methods of resisting, mordanting, mordant discharging, and cross dyeing  to create unique fabrics that have all the elements I love: texture, color, woven structure, and always some surprises. The natural dye palette and processes not only rival, but I think surpass, the effects I was achieving with synthetic dyes.

Red samples: mordant printing, dyed with madder, lac, and quebracho

Sequencing dye and resists: wool, dyed with indigo and black walnut hulls.

Cross dyeing effects, woven of wool and cotton, dyed with indigo and lichen

Cross dyeing: fabrics woven of wool, cotton, silk, dyed with indigo and madder

Mordant printing, mordant discharge, dyed with indigo and pomegranate

Indigo variations with woven shibori

mordant printing, dyed with cochineal

Mordant printing, dyed with osage and weld

Last week I taught a class on cotton printing with natural dyes at Cloth Fiber Workshop in Asheville. I was reminded once again why I teach and why I have written this book. It is gratifying to work with people who are curious, skilled (or not), and eager to learn more. The students in my classes keep pushing me to increase my own knowledge, to better understand what I do know, and to clarify my reasons for working with natural dye.

I would not be the dyer I am today without my own teachers and mentors. Michel Garcia of France and  Joy Boutrup of Denmark have been guiding influences. They are both curious and knowledgable and have inspired me to continue down this path. Michel and Joy are also generous teachers. None of us can do this by ourselves.

Michel Garcia, coming from the dye garden in Lauris, France

Joy Boutrup,mixing indigo print paste at Penland School of Crafts

Although Woven Shibori includes lots of technical information about weaving fabrics for shibori, the dye information should be of interest to anyone who combines resist techniques with natural dye on their cloth.

Studies in green textures: mordanting printing, indigo, and woven resists

Overshot woven resist, dyed with indigo

The Surface Design Association News Blog just published a piece I wrote on dyeing.  Here is the link. The transition from synthetic to natural dyes and ingredients took some time, a lot of thought, and some real determination. I have reached the point of no return…..

Yoshiko I. Wada wrote the follow comment in response to the latest blog post. She was a very important part of this experience and I thought her words, with  additional insight,  deserved their own spot and thus the following:

“This is a friend of Catharine’s, Yoshiko I. Wada from slowfiberstudios.com and naturaldyeworkshop.com, where we re-blog Catharine’s blog in our Dye Nerds’ Blog. Since the person in charge of our blog is on vacation until the end January and I was g Japanese to English translator for Dr. Yamazaki I am jumping in for some additional thoughts and information.

The Jinze Art Centre in Shanghai and Slow Fiber Studios in Berkely, CA organized the workshops with Japanese masters working with my colleague Edith Cheung who is in charge of the textile program there.

RE: Camellia ash (椿灰汁) since the Asuka Period (538 to 710 ) and Nara Period (AD 710 to 794) documents recorded that the Japanese dyers used the liquid strained from the camellia ash as a vehicle to shift pH and at the same time to access its alum as a mordant. Camellia is a plant which is called bio-accumulator of aluminum similar to symplocos, lycopodium and miconia. Those plants have been used as mordants in Southeast Asia, northern Europe, and Mexico respectively. The anthology of poems Man’yōshū 万葉集 literally means “Collection of Ten Thousand Leaves” contains many poems associating with purple colors (murasaki) and gromwell roots (shikon) and madder as well as camellia ash. The collection contains poems ranging from AD 347 (poems #85–89) through 759 (#4516), the bulk of them representing the period after AD 600.

Catharine: At the bottom is the love poem by Princess Nukata I told you about. And it starts with madder (akane) as a pillow word but scene is the gromewll field (known to belong to Tenchi Emperor). Murasaki is purple and the plant was a precious medicinal herbs. From the poem, the guarded field may have hosted wild gromwell plants like the Super Gromwell Roots that Edith found in Hong Kong where herbalist told her “only the very best is found in Hong Kong.”

The wild purple roots were so strange looking compared to the ones imported from China that Dr. Yamazaki uses in Japan that it gave him such worries during the class. He thought after making the students knead the soaked roots for 2 hours on their knees on the floor, only grey pale purple is achieved.

On the contrary, we achieved the most beautiful purple even with limited time we had to process it all. Did he mention that in his studio, he kneads the roots a few times in the morning and some more in the afternoon to get maximum colorants from the plants? And he repeats dyeing, middle mordanting, and dyeing, many times in a few days to get saturated deep purple? He did say the purple dye extracted in this way has much more complexity and depth than the easy extraction with alcohol.

Yoshiko I. Wada

茜さす紫野行き標野（しめの）行き野守（のもり）は見ずや君が袖振る 額田王（ぬかたのおおきみ）．

訳）茜色を帯びる紫草が生い茂る（天智天皇の御料地である）野を行き，貴方は袖を振る．野守りが見とがめはしないでしょうか？

I just returned from several weeks in China, where I did an artist residency at the Jinze Art Center near Shanghai. The residency was  focused on weaving and the study of Chinese local “tubu” cloth from the 1950’s and 60’s.

I also participated in a natural dye workshop with Japanese dye master, Dr. Kazuki  Yamazaki. Dr. Yamasaki is a 3rd generation natural dyer and his family has specialized in the traditional dye processes, which they have meticulously researched from the Japanese Heian Dynasty (about a thousand years ago). He is a well-respected practitioner, author and teacher.

Each day we explored a different red dye on silk yarns and fabrics: Sappanwood (Caesalpinia sappan), Madder (Rubia Cordifolia), Lac (Laccifer lacca), Safflower (Carthamus tinctorius), and Purple Root/Gromwell (Lithospermum purpurocaeruleum). These are all special colors that would have been used by nobility (the commoners used mostly indigo and a lot of mousy browns). All of the dyestuffs we used were locally sourced in China.

Although  our procedures every day were similar, each dye required special treatment. Dr. Yamazaki has a deep knowledge of botany and chemistry of the dye process so we learned “why” right along with the “how”. It’s rare to find this approach in the dye world.  For instance, the color is drawn out of each plant differently and by tweaking pH the hues can be made to shift dramatically. I very much appreciated his willingness to explain each step clearly.

Dyeing originated in China and spread to Japan many years ago but without the continued use of dye plants in Chinese medicine, there would be no dye industry to speak of in Japan. Most of the plants we used have medicinal properties in Chinese medicine. There was a young traditional Chinese doctor in the class who wanted to learn about the plants as a source of color, although she uses them regularly in her medical practice.

Our class comprised of

• 1 Japanese teacher
• 5 assistants
• 2 translators (Japanese to Chinese, Japanese to English)
• 3 Americans
• 20 Chinese

So, as you can imagine it was quite a noisy classroom! Everything was written in Chinese characters, Japanese characters, and English. The Chinese and Japanese characters are similar but not always interpreted the same way.

The 20 Chinese students were all young – in their 30’s or so. They were bright, inquisitive, and interested in their own traditions and history. It was a rich mixture of people and process.

In the west we typically use a European pre-mordant approach to dyeing: mordant first, then dye. But the Japanese approach to dyeing silks is quite different. The mordant comes in the middle: dye first, then mordant, and back to dye. The mordant and dye steps can be repeated many times to build up a greater depth of color. I have known about this approach for a long time but it never quite made sense to my western sensibility. I now see some genuine advantages to dyeing silks in this way and I’m anxious to explore this approach in my own studio dyeing.

There is always more to learn about plants, dyeing, chemistry, and process. Life and learning continues…

I just returned from a remarkable trip to Peru with a group from the Center for Textile Research (CTR) in Copenhagen, Denmark. It’s worth looking at their website. This center pursues the study of textiles from an interdisciplinary perspective that includes geology, history, archaeology, conservation, language and craftsmanship. There are parallels between the bog mummies preserved in Denmark and those preserved in the desert of Peru. It was an honor to travel and observe with this group of people. We saw a small amount of natural dyeing but there were other elements, even more compelling, during this trip so I’d like to share some of that.

What is it that compels a craftsperson to excellence? To go beyond what is necessary and to work in cooperation with others?

Early in my own weaving career I learned 4 selvedge weaving from Navajo rug weavers. This experience has stayed with me and done more to sensitize my appreciation and understanding of the textiles we saw in Peru than any other preparation I could have done.

The Wari (Huari) tapestry tunic that we saw at Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, was my first indication that things are not always as they first appear. When examining this piece of cloth, I was astounded to realize that the warp actually ran in the horizontal direction of the tunic. This means that this piece of cloth was woven more than 2 meters in width and only a half-meter (approx.) tall. As I am more familiar with the back strap weaving of Guatemala, I had always incorrectly assumed that an individual weaver wove these fabrics as long, narrow panels. The wide cloth indicates that several people could have woven on this cloth at one time, making it a communal effort that might be accomplished more quickly. The repeating patterns with subtle color and motif variations suggest that each weaver had the freedom to interpret and vary the pattern. Yet the overall palette and design were completely harmonious.

On the last day of our trip, I re-examined a similar piece at Museo Amano. This one was woven even wider – over 3 meters I would guess – and displayed a similar rhythm of pattern and variation, not unlike that of a piece of jazz music.

The large  tie-dyed piece from the same period at the Museo Amano likely represents another type of cooperation. Many years ago, I was involved in an exploratory weaving project in collaboration with art historian, Jane Rehl. We attempted to duplicate this type of scaffold weaving, creating multi-selvedged pieces that were later resist dyed and then sewn together to achieve the larger textile. Initially we made the assumption that large blankets of these pieces might have been woven together as one large blanket and dyed while still connected. After setting up scaffold looms, we realized that only two pieces need be woven at one time. These small weavings, when done with a group of people, resulted in a cooperative spirit of building something together. After the individual pieces were dyed in different colors, the entire textile was sewn together.

At the Weaving Center in Chinchero we saw fabrics that were handspun of either wool or alpaca, naturally dyed, and woven on backstrap looms. The natural dyes have been recently re-introduced here. When synthetic dyes were brought in the natural colors were abandoned until Nilda Callañaupa Alvarez took on the responsibility of learning the local plants and teaching the women to work with them. They do lightfastness tests in the strong sun of the Andes and use only dyes that perform well in these tests. I was not familiar with many of the dye plants since they were particular to this region. They included roots, lichens, indigo, cochineal, and beautiful greens from plants of the Baccharis family.

We watched two women  preparing a warp. I was struck by how these two women (one older, one young) tossed the balls of yarn back and forth in the rhythmic dance of warping. Nilda told us how each woman wove her own individual textiles, but was helped along the way in the spinning, warping, and dyeing processes. I have the honor of bringing home a textile that Nilda warped and her mother wove. And it wasn’t enough to weave a piece with 4 excellent selvedges. Each piece of cloth was finished with an additional woven binding that completely encased the selvedge, strengthening the cloth and adding another element for its complexity and beauty.

We saw astounding Inca dry stone masonry at Machu Picchu. What is it that compelled these architects/craftsman to carry, cut, and fit stone with such precision and mastery? Rocks that weighed tons were cut and fitted like small Legos. It required large communities of people working together. Even walkways and water channels required the work and precision of many.

In our western countries, we are most apt to work alone, mastering our craft and accomplishing the work as individuals. We tend to put emphasis on MY work, MY process. We witnessed a different approach amongst the craftspeople of Peru, both past and present. Several years ago, while working with weavers in India, I observed them working together, always with many hands on the same piece of cloth. The spirit of cooperation that we saw in Peru was similar. The Peruvian craftsmen shared their labor, yet also shared the experience.