Indigo Discharge, Blue Brown and White with Elin Noble

Instructor: Elin Noble

This five-day class will engage indigo dye from two vantage points. We will begin by applying indigo on cellulose cloth (cotton, linen, hemp, ramie). After that we will selectively remove indigo through a series of resist techniques.

The first day of the course we will make an indigo vat and dye cloth creating a variety of blue hues. We will use paste and clay resists in addition to stitched, wrapped, and clamped resists to create patterns on the cloth.

We will create a variety of imagery, focusing on blue on brown, blue on white, white on blue, brown on blue, or a combination of all of these. Potassium permanganate will remove the indigo, which first leaves the background color in varying shades of brown. Further processing removes the brown, leaving the background color white with an indigo-blue pattern. This process not only works on indigo-dyed cloth but also works on cloth dyed with natural dyes and synthetic dyes.

We will cover how to maintain an indigo vat as well as safe and effective methods for using the discharge products.

Elin Noble - Indigo Discharge

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