Art Cloth: An Ecoprinting & Natural Dyeing Retreat

Introduction:
Art Cloth is an immersive experience in creating art on cloth through eco-printing, indigo dyeing, natural dyeing, and various resist techniques. It is a playful and intense opportunity to create cloth for use in your art quilts, taking your fibre arts to a new level. Working in two-person teams and independently, you’ll have lots of opportunities to hone your understanding and your skills.    

Techniques taught:
For eco-printing, we’ll start with the basics of getting a good clean print and the elements that go into it. Then we’ll layer on blankets and dips, making sure we understand their beauty as well as drawbacks, and we’ll finish by exploring the effects of pre and post dyeing and mordanting.  

For natural dyeing, we’ll look at how to prepare both the cloth and the bath and how to maximize colour uptake. Then we’ll add in various modifiers and explore the use of resists. Indigo, marigold, logwood, and sequoia will be the backbone of our explorations, and some teams will go on to explore cochineal, madder, lac, chestnut, rhubarb, and others.  

Towards the end of the retreat, the two techniques will be blended, encouraging an explosion of colour and beauty!

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