Dyeing with plants
This autumn’s three-part plant-dyeing course is open to participants interested in dyeing fabrics with plants, especially native plants.
Instructor: Belliisi Seenemaa
On Thursdays 12.09, 19.09, 26.09 kell 17.30-19.30
During the course we will also talk about more exotic approaches and try some of them out. We will attempt to work with plants available in autumn and we will talk about which plants to harvest, how and what to dry for the winter period and how to dye both yarn and fabrics.
In the first two sessions we will work together on dyeing fabrics and yarns, and in the third session we will weave the dyed yarns into a decorative wall hanging using the gobelain technique of picture tapestry weaving. In order to easily create a small picture tapestry in a short amount of time, we will also include seasonal plants in the weaving, i.e. we will combine the plants and the dyed yarns in an artistic way.
For the first meeting, we ask you to bring a piece of fabric that you would like to dye: we will check if and how the fabric can be pre-treated and we will dye it with plants at the second meeting. We will also dye yarns, so that it will be nice to knit something soft with them for the winter season. The natural dyes go very well together and have a calming effect, like a woodland landscape.
During the course, you will learn which tools and materials to use, which plants to harvest and what the dyeing process is like.
The instructor, Belliisi Seenemaa, is a freelance artist who has studied decoration and stylistics at the Tartu Art School and textiles at the Pallas University of Applied Sciences. In addition, in Berlin she studied combining e-textiles and technologies, in France traditional leather art techniques, and in Estonia traditional ways of processing vegetable fibres and dyes.
