St-Lazare fibre artist offers natural dye workshops
A local fibre artist hopes to pass on her knowledge of traditional natural dye techniques to knitters, spinners and sewers this summer in two full-day workshops at her home this summer.
St-Lazare crafter Andrea Belcham dyes yarn and fabric with plants and other natural materials, most of which she forages from forests, fields and the weedy borders of suburban roads, or grows in her dye garden at home.
“It’s something I can do with my kids. They’re natural foragers. They like helping me collect things,” she said. “They’re used to me having a pair of rubber gloves and a Swiss Army knife in the glove compartment on the off chance that we find a good dye material.”
Belcham gathers stinging nettle to produce a bright green dye, Staghorn sumac for olive-green, Black-eyed Susans, fallen acorns and black walnuts for different shades of brown, goldenrod for yellows and elderberry and blackberry for silvery-pink.
Some shades also come from kitchen scraps: she saves onion skins to make a rusty orange colour, and avocado pits and peels to create a pale dusty rose-pink dye.
“If I want to make it more interesting, I put another colour on top. If I have a yellow yarn I got from goldenrod, if I dip that once in indigo, I’ve got green. If I had onion skin first and then put two dips of indigo I get a really pretty blue colour that looks kind of antiqued. It’s dark blue with a browny, coppery sheen to it,” she said.
Belcham said there are a few colours, like indigo, that can only be created from exotic ingredients, which Belcham buys online from Maiwa, a Vancouver-based supplier of natural pigments and traditional fibre arts materials.
On July 7, Belcham will lead an introduction to indigo dyeing workshop, using resist-dye techniques inspired by Japanese Shibori traditions to create patterns on organic cotton and linen. Participants will come away with a metre of dyed and patterned cotton for future sewing projects, as well as four cotton dinner napkins and four linen handkerchiefs. The workshop is from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and costs $90, which includes all materials and lunch.
On July 28, she will also offer an introduction to natural dyeing, using locally gathered plants to dye yarn. Participants will make three dye baths, which will be used to dye five skeins of natural yarn from a local fibre farm, and milled in Canada. This workshop is also from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and costs $95.
For more information on the workshops to see pictures of Belcham’s yarns and crafts, visit foxprintfibres.wordpress.com.