Color moves us. Color moves the world. Humans are innately creative, driven to make beauty in collaboration with the living world around us. We seek not only to survive, but to delight in life and to indulge our senses, to express our individuality and to fold ourselves together in belonging. Since time immemorial, we have adorned ourselves in the brightest stones and shells and feathers we could find, depicted the stories of our lives on our clay and stone walls and marked our pathways with blessings and warnings painted with pigments of pounded stone and sediment mixed with grease and hide glue. Since mud and blood stained our first rough-spun cloth, we have sought to capture ever more vibrant and enduring colors of the earth on our garments, to walk in beauty and meaning. We have used our innate cleverness to create ever more complex color and pattern languages of protection and belonging, painting sigils on our doors, weaving spells and signals into our clothing and even into the very rugs we eventually walked upon, painting and tattooing our skin in rituals that guided our lives and bound us together as peoples. Color, and the distinctive and varied ways we have found to conjure and apply it, is intrinsic to culture–holds and shapes culture in ways that we can interpret at a glance, before a word is spoken, a note played, or a ritual revealed.
Historically, color played not only into what we saw, but how we lived. Our agricultural and wild harvest cycles wrapped around color as well as food and medicine. Dyeing was a way of life practiced cyclically in community, as well as a treasured skill kept in family secrets and closely distributed in professional guilds, influencing economies and driving trade on every scale from local to global. The silk road also ran with indigo, as did transatlantic trade–with the precious powdered pigment as well as with West African slaves who were captured for their invaluable generational knowledge of the notoriously tricky blue ways. Still today, human taste for vibrant color has a destructive side, like all botanies of desire. Rivers literally run red with synthetic dyes in the global third world that produces much modern fashion, clothes that are made to expire as we tire of the latest trends, moving onto the Pantone it-tone of the next season. Chemicals and micro-plastics in these textiles enter our water table, our bloodstreams and endocrine systems, imbuing our garments with quite the opposite effects we once sought and achieved with the power and beauty of color.
Every color now created synthetically can be achieved with plant dyes. Though it might take many years of practice and a lucky or labored harvest of just the right dye-stuff–sea snails, lichens, long-fermented green fruits, aged gnarled roots, fresh morning urine. We can create glowing golds, searing oranges, grounding greens, mouth-watering blues, rich purples and raging ravishing reds, profound black…all from the earth in ways that are regenerative, collective, connective, meaningful. In ways that honor the cycles of the earth and the embedded value of the precious plant material, ways that reawaken the heirloom skill of whispering to the cauldron, of knowing when the color strikes hot, or cool, or vivid, or deep. We thirst for color, seek it, feel it viscerally, assign it meaning, intuit what each hue offers us energetically and often dress accordingly–for joy, mourning, reverence, devotion, innocence, achievement, status. Color symbolism is not universal, varying widely between cultures. But every color is believed to have healing powers somewhere in the world, and many dye plants are also medicines, worn talismanically for a somatic and energetic experience of the plant’s medicine. And sometimes, the color IS the medicine. The color IS the feeling.
In that quest for color, for the feeling of color, we can discover a reverence for the subtle palette as well, when we learn how generously the plants offer us soft sunbeams and peach wafts, petal pinks and shimmering greys. The practice of drawing color from the earth can deeply teach us of the value of beauty, attune our appetites and senses to understand harmonious ecological practices as a part of beauty. Becoming a dyer changes the way we see color, the way we feel and experience and wear it. Color becomes treasure, memory, bond, gift, seasonal rite, a secret song of the earth that accompanies us through our days upon it.
Let us pick up the many-colored mantle of our ancestors, of those who have kept and developed this craft throughout the ages, and return to the ways of beauty making, which pleases the spirits and also ourselves. Let us revive the ways of adorning our bodies and our homes with care and intention, of cloaking ourselves in stories of connection with the land and our sacred plant relatives.
The Color Wheel is a seasonal round devoted to conjuring, courting and coaxing the full spectrum of color from the earth, from plants that we grow and forage together in the Rewild Portland greenhouse and Green Anchors gardens, on the Willamette River just north of Cathedral Park and St. Johns Bridge. We meet for one weekend each month in The Wheelhouse fiber arts studio to ply the rainbow of plant dyes, inks, and paints in community and ritual, exploring the energetics, chemistry and creation of a full palette of colors and a variety of patterning techniques.
Who is The Color Wheel for?
The Color Wheel provides a deep foundation for a wide range of dye practices and is suitable for all skill levels. Our program is designed to layer more complex techniques with foundational skillsets, so whether you arrive as a brand new beginner or with years of experience, you will gain insight into ways of deepening your dye practice. In addition to this, we have found that so much of the value of these programs is in building relationships with other creatives in our local community, celebrating turn of the seasons together, having access to beautiful gardens to tend and grow dye plants throughout the year, setting aside time for land based creativity, and coming together in the very human act of tending land collectively. Each month’s offering is designed to spawn years of study and experimentation, offering students enough experience and information to reproduce class results and confidently continue to develop their craft. Participants will take home a variety of dyed textiles and written resources each month and add samples and notes to our swatch books/ dyer’s journals to refer back to in what we hope becomes a lifelong beauty-making and nature connection practice of working with color from the earth.
Takeaways
Swatch Book/ Dyer’s Journal of dyed textiles and ink/paint pigments made from roots, leaves, flowers, mushrooms, and seeds grown or wild harvested with the Color Wheel class. Detailed notes on techniques and how to replicate results
A rainbow of botanically dyed and printed wool, silk and cotton textiles, including transformed personal garments
A personalized felted piece with colorful needle felting on it, a lovely showcase of our fiber rainbow through the seasons
Rich resource binder of techniques, skills, tools, chemistry, and lore on plants used in class, as well as online resources and access during class time to relevant Rewild Portland library materials
A hand-bound book of songs, stories and folklore shared in class
Plants for your own fiber, dye and printing garden, and to share with your gardening community—may include bidens, cosmos, coreopsis, madder, indigo, safflower, marigold, scabiosa, safflower, rhubarb, daylily, milkweed, mulberry, flax, smokebush, japanese maple, and many others
Program Dates and Themes for 2026
Sessions run from 10am-4pm with time for lunch in the middle. Some classes may shift due to plant maturity, weather and the vagaries of working with the cycles.
March
Beginning, Seed, Raw, Pale, Blank, White, Equinox
In this early spring session of new beginnings, we will do the first tasks of awakening garden beds and sowing seeds, preparing textiles and raw fleece to receive all of the colors yet to come.
*We will create hand bound books to hold our color swatches for the seasonal round and will each take home a silk bandana/ hankie dyed with some of the garden’s gifts from last season.
3/21 Preparing beds and first seed sowing in our dye garden–indigo, cosmos, coreopsis, safflower, weld, madder, marigold, scabiosa and other plants for color and fiber. Learning propagation techniques and making planting plans. Hand binding a beautiful book to hold samples of our color explorations through the coming seasons. 3/22 Fiber preparation: cleaning, scouring, mordanting chemistry and practice. Discussing the ways that protein and cellulose fibers are treated to get the best results. Techniques we will use to prepare our textiles to take dye throughout the year. Dyeing silk in an immersion bath with last year’s flowers. Exploring mordanted vs unmordanted fibers.
April
Earth, Subtle, Foundational layers, Brown, Tan, Gray, Black
As the spring quickens, we will continue learning about dye plant cultivation and propagation, planting out what we seeded in the last session. We’ll explore the dyes contained in the abundance of spring pruned branches and the magic of tannins as dyes and binders. As we make our first iron bath from scratch, there will be a discussion of the age-old marriage between tannin and iron to make black and we will do our first explorations in natural ink making, exploring different ways of applying them to paper.
*We will each take home textile pieces dyed with the beautiful colors of bark and our first paper pieces made with our own natural inks, and a vial of ink with a simple carved dip pen. Everyone will also have the opportunity to take home dye plant starts for their own dye gardens.
4/11 Planting out indigo and dye flowers, practicing and discussing propagation and dye garden cultivation techniques. Exploring the place of tannins on the Dye/Mordant continuum. Preparing dye baths with spring barks- apple, poplar, alder, pear, plum. Starting our iron bucket and copper jar for modifiers, mordants, and inks. Distributing dye plants to take home. 4/12Dying fiber swatches in our bark baths and using tannins to prepare cellulose fibers for future use, exploring the ink to dye continuum with avocado pit, acorns and oak galls. Making ink, carving quick dip pens+ stamps to decorate sample book covers and create natural ink painted/ printed postcards.
May
Emergence, Pleasure, Rainbow, First Harvest, Cross-Pollination
As the season warms and unfolds, we will continue to tend our garden, celebrating the development of the early leaves and the blossoming of the first flowers. We’ll capture the beautiful impressions of these early petals through bundle dyeing and Hapazome (flower pounding), and will explore immersion dye baths made from foraged plants and kitchen scraps which we will then extract lake pigments from.
*We will each take home a pair of natural fiber socks dyed with flower petals and an organic cotton Hapazome tote bag with fresh flower impressions.
5/4Tending the garden and harvesting first flowers and leaves, flower petal bundle dyeing, immersion dye baths with early plants and kitchen harvests. Discussion of exhaust baths, and creation of lake pigments from our immersion dye baths.
5/5 More garden harvest and Hapazome with first flowers on cotton totes. Using our newly created pigment to paint and/or print on paper.
June
The Good Green Earth, Fullness, Solstice
As summer is almost upon us and we are surrounded by the lush greenery of this season, we will begin our study in capturing the impressions of fresh leaves on cloth through bundle dyeing. This will be a deep dive into multiple techniques used to get clear, crisp prints from leaves, with a discussion of the many ways to deepen and explore this craft. We will also experiment with other ways of conjuring green through creating a green nettle immersion dye bath, and will learn how to shift our bark dyed yellows from last month with iron. We will also begin to explore ways of creating pattern on textiles with shibori string resist.
*We will each take home at least two wearable textile pieces dyed with leaves and will have the chance to modify a piece from one of our immersion dye baths.
6/13 Tending the gardens and harvesting leaves and flowers for bundle dying (aka leaf printing, aka ecoprinting) and detailed introduction to bundle dying. Wrapping bundles with our harvest and steaming. Creation of a green nettle dye bath.
6/14 Exploration of learning from our first day of bundle dying, and more advanced approaches to compositional considerations, trouble-shooting, dipped leaves, blankets and cover cloths, plants as resists
July
Abundance, Golden Rainbow, Solar Energy, Aquamarine
As we gather at the height of summer, we celebrate the abundance and vigor of our gardens with a generous harvest of blossoms and leaves that give golden hues as well as our first big cutting of fresh indigo. We will create a rainbow of golden wool fiber to integrate into projects later in the season and will soak up our pots of gold on a handful of other textiles. We will also get our hands into some lush, fresh indigo and conjure stunning teals and blue greens with the salt extraction method.
*We will each take home silken textiles, one dyed golden and another aquamarine as well as each stashing a quantity of dyed wool fiber for future projects.
7/4 Tending our flourishing summer garden. Abundant flower and leaf harvests. First indigo harvest and feeding. Propagating indigo root cuttings. Preparing our dye pots of gold. Learning the fresh indigo salt extraction method on silk. Discussing and starting fresh indigo pigment fermentation. Green persimmon processing and fermentation for Kakishibu.
7/5 Dying the golden rainbow with our pots of gold. Exploring with the way that golden dyes take on a variety of fibers. Learning a format for dying with many plants at one time and being able to see the colors side by side. Shifting color with mordants and ph.
August
Blue Deep Dive, Contrast, Alchemy, Intuition
Join the Blue Hand Cult in an indigo immersion as the indigo plants reach their glorious apex. Exploring the special chemistry of indigo vats that turn green leaves into deep blue textiles. Indigo blue in history and lore. Discussion of several different types of indigo vats from around the world. Understanding the use of indigo dyeing on an array of textiles. Experimenting with pattern from shibori, dip dyeing, clay paste and rice paste resists. Discussion of how to conjure and store pigment from indigo.
*We will each take home numerous pieces of wearable and decorative textiles showcasing a range of techniques and visual effects all in a stunning, sought after range of indigo blue hues, as well as a jar of fermenting indigo leaves to experiment with pigment extraction at home
8/22 Harvest Indigo for pigment fermentation, demonstrate fermentation steps, fresh leaf ice dye, make an iron vat, sig vat discussion, take pigment jars home.
8/23 Finally, those coveted deep blues. Vat dips! Shibori patterns, Clay Paste Resist, optional hair dyeing, blue hands!
As seeds drop into the rich soil and plants begin to arch back towards the earth, we are called to explore the long red thread of ancestry, bloodlines, and the many human generations that have treasured the red dye of madder root. We will do a final harvest of indigo and some of our dye flowers, and will have the opportunity to continue adding layers of color to pieces from earlier in the season. We will tap into our own ancestry and reflect on this turn of the seasons. We will embark on a deep exploration of madder, the history and importance of the color red and the plant that yields it and have the opportunity to see its beauty on multiple different textiles and explore how it shifts with ph and iron. We will also explore pokeberry and Kakishibu persimmon dyes as part of our foray into the red rainbow.
*We will each take home a beautiful red satin silk bandana or scarf and will continue to build our fiber library of color.
9/12 Fall planting. Last indigo harvest. Taking leaves home for pigment fermentation experiments. Mordanting garments for bundle-dyeing. Making intuitive sugar vat with our pigment for silks. Overdyeing and garment dipping. Soaking and beginning the fermentation of the madder root.
9/13 Red Rainbow. The many shades of madder root, a temperature and pH sensitive dye that makes the world’s best reds. Overdipping with indigo for purples. Kakishibu persimmon application to cloth for a beautiful rust-colored dye and increased water and UV resistance. Pokeberry Pink.
October
Mycelial Growth, Feeding the Roots, Fecundity, Death and Rebirth, Return
As the leaves and nuts drop and the rains return, we sense the lace work patterns of mycelium awakening and flourishing beneath our feet. It is time to explore the wondrous world of Mushroom Dyes. We will go a-hunting for fungal treasures that grow upon the trees and beneath our feet, and with luck we will find gifts in the forest to expand our portfolio of color. We will focus on recording the mushroom’s hues on wool, as their affinity is strong. We will also explore the rich variety of browns given by black walnut hull dye and will have one last opportunity to immerse ourselves in bundle dying, this time with strong, sturdy, bioactive fall leaves.
*We will each take home a textile piece demonstrating the beautiful autumn hues of mushrooms, and will have the chance to upcycle bundle dye a garment or two from our closets.
10/24 Mushroom Hunting, location TBD. Basics of Mushroom foraging–ethics, location considerations, ecology of fungi, and how to ID common dye mushrooms.
10/25 Mushroom dyeing, hopefully with some of our own harvest! Introduction to these low-temperature, generally pH sensitive dyes that love wool. We’ll use fresh or dried, depending on our harvest success. Tending roots in the garden. Last big batch of bundle dying with strong, mature leaves on garments. Strategies for getting good prints on different shapes and types of textiles. Black walnut bath exploration.
November
Gratitude Practice, Creativity in the Season of Stillness, Laying to Rest
The season has turned and this last meeting will bring us into a cozy creative space to enjoy the fruits of our labor. We will revel in the glory of our myriad colorful fibers, pigments, and textile bits and will have space to create whatever we like with our hard- earned rainbow of materials. Lingering questions about process or material can be answered and explored. We will delve into needle felting as a medium for color and pattern, giving us the opportunity to work with our beautiful variety of woolen fibers. We will also explore the traditional gratitude practices of this season and will discuss many ways of giving thanks. We will each have time to contribute to a collaboratively woven craft piece made from our seasonal rainbow, which we will raffle off to benefit a cause that we agree upon. We will reflect on the ways that our lives and creative practices have become woven together through the wheel of the year, and finally we will close our circle with care and intention.
*We will each take home a needle felted project, recording the full turn of the year in color, as well as a variety of painted and printed goods made with our pigments and inks, and any number of altered and patterned dyed goods from our final explorations with our colorful creation from this year, as well as a whole community of fiber artist friends!
11/21 Putting garden beds to rest. Painting with our accumulated pigments, inks, and dyes. Doing final dips and modifications on previously dyed pieces. Working on a felted project to needle felt with our rainbow of fibers. Gratitude practice and sharing. 11/22Working on our personal needle felting projects. Continued experiments and projects with our pigment collection. Collectively adding colorful bits of fiber from our seasons together to create a woven project for the community. Intentional closing of our time together and farewells.
Instructors
Ivy Stovall (she/her) delights in the abundance, patterns, and chaos of the natural world and of humanity. Her Interdisciplinary Humanities degree, two thirds of a biology degree at the University of West Florida, and her many travels launched her into work in outdoor education, which she began as a 4H camp naturalist, teaching outdoor skills and elementary and middle school science curriculum in the field. She has taught high and low ropes challenge courses, ESL at all grade levels, and developed independent art, adventure, and theater camps for kids. Currently Ivy manages Rewild Portland’s nursery and land tending project at our Green Anchors home base, weaving community around plants and practicing the art of gathering creatively, hosting educational and participatory community events. She lives and works at The MudHut Kulturhaus, her St. Johns urban permaculture homestead, where she shares her enthusiasm for outdoor living and hosts Rewild camps, classes and skillshares, music and theater, women’s groups, and community celebrations and ritual. She likes to always be harvesting and keeps her hands busy making herbal medicines, homebrews and fermentations, botanical inks, dyes and pigments, wild foods, basketry, and natural building. Always a student and always a teacher, Ivy enjoys contributing to and learning from the passionate people of the Rewild Portland community. Ivy loves the creativity, curiosity, and wildness of all people and is dedicated to the work of building healthy intergenerational communities connected to and through the natural world.
Erin Fahey (She/her) lives in the gorge east of Portland, in the lands of the Wasco and Wishram peoples, on a big river at the base of a big mountain. She is a land tender, maker, and teacher whose focus is connecting with the living world through craft. She is forever a dabbler, studying herbal medicine, basketry, botanical dyes, farming, and a myriad of other land based skills throughout her life. Her work is informed by curiosity, exploration of ancestry, and a deep reverence for the land. She feels that learning these ways teach us how to live in reciprocity and give us the opportunity to create a more beautiful, just world for this current moment and crucially, for future generations of life to inhabit as well. Her classes are an invitation to deepen our sense of place, and to do the very human work of creating beauty with our hands.
The Color Wheel
Conjuring color from the land through the wheel of the year.
A 9-month (March–November) fiber arts immersion program, 2 days per month, 10 am–4 pm. Class size is limited to 16 participants.
TUITION: $3,495 (Materials Included, read our Refund Policy here)
Color moves us. Color moves the world. Humans are innately creative, driven to make beauty in collaboration with the living world around us. We seek not only to survive, but to delight in life and to indulge our senses, to express our individuality and to fold ourselves together in belonging. Since time immemorial, we have adorned ourselves in the brightest stones and shells and feathers we could find, depicted the stories of our lives on our clay and stone walls and marked our pathways with blessings and warnings painted with pigments of pounded stone and sediment mixed with grease and hide glue. Since mud and blood stained our first rough-spun cloth, we have sought to capture ever more vibrant and enduring colors of the earth on our garments, to walk in beauty and meaning. We have used our innate cleverness to create ever more complex color and pattern languages of protection and belonging, painting sigils on our doors, weaving spells and signals into our clothing and even into the very rugs we eventually walked upon, painting and tattooing our skin in rituals that guided our lives and bound us together as peoples. Color, and the distinctive and varied ways we have found to conjure and apply it, is intrinsic to culture–holds and shapes culture in ways that we can interpret at a glance, before a word is spoken, a note played, or a ritual revealed.
Historically, color played not only into what we saw, but how we lived. Our agricultural and wild harvest cycles wrapped around color as well as food and medicine. Dyeing was a way of life practiced cyclically in community, as well as a treasured skill kept in family secrets and closely distributed in professional guilds, influencing economies and driving trade on every scale from local to global. The silk road also ran with indigo, as did transatlantic trade–with the precious powdered pigment as well as with West African slaves who were captured for their invaluable generational knowledge of the notoriously tricky blue ways. Still today, human taste for vibrant color has a destructive side, like all botanies of desire. Rivers literally run red with synthetic dyes in the global third world that produces much modern fashion, clothes that are made to expire as we tire of the latest trends, moving onto the Pantone it-tone of the next season. Chemicals and micro-plastics in these textiles enter our water table, our bloodstreams and endocrine systems, imbuing our garments with quite the opposite effects we once sought and achieved with the power and beauty of color.
Every color now created synthetically can be achieved with plant dyes. Though it might take many years of practice and a lucky or labored harvest of just the right dye-stuff–sea snails, lichens, long-fermented green fruits, aged gnarled roots, fresh morning urine. We can create glowing golds, searing oranges, grounding greens, mouth-watering blues, rich purples and raging ravishing reds, profound black…all from the earth in ways that are regenerative, collective, connective, meaningful. In ways that honor the cycles of the earth and the embedded value of the precious plant material, ways that reawaken the heirloom skill of whispering to the cauldron, of knowing when the color strikes hot, or cool, or vivid, or deep. We thirst for color, seek it, feel it viscerally, assign it meaning, intuit what each hue offers us energetically and often dress accordingly–for joy, mourning, reverence, devotion, innocence, achievement, status. Color symbolism is not universal, varying widely between cultures. But every color is believed to have healing powers somewhere in the world, and many dye plants are also medicines, worn talismanically for a somatic and energetic experience of the plant’s medicine. And sometimes, the color IS the medicine. The color IS the feeling.
In that quest for color, for the feeling of color, we can discover a reverence for the subtle palette as well, when we learn how generously the plants offer us soft sunbeams and peach wafts, petal pinks and shimmering greys. The practice of drawing color from the earth can deeply teach us of the value of beauty, attune our appetites and senses to understand harmonious ecological practices as a part of beauty. Becoming a dyer changes the way we see color, the way we feel and experience and wear it. Color becomes treasure, memory, bond, gift, seasonal rite, a secret song of the earth that accompanies us through our days upon it.
Let us pick up the many-colored mantle of our ancestors, of those who have kept and developed this craft throughout the ages, and return to the ways of beauty making, which pleases the spirits and also ourselves. Let us revive the ways of adorning our bodies and our homes with care and intention, of cloaking ourselves in stories of connection with the land and our sacred plant relatives.
The Color Wheel is a seasonal round devoted to conjuring, courting and coaxing the full spectrum of color from the earth, from plants that we grow and forage together in the Rewild Portland greenhouse and Green Anchors gardens, on the Willamette River just north of Cathedral Park and St. Johns Bridge. We meet for one weekend each month in The Wheelhouse fiber arts studio to ply the rainbow of plant dyes, inks, and paints in community and ritual, exploring the energetics, chemistry and creation of a full palette of colors and a variety of patterning techniques.
Who is The Color Wheel for?
The Color Wheel provides a deep foundation for a wide range of dye practices and is suitable for all skill levels. Our program is designed to layer more complex techniques with foundational skillsets, so whether you arrive as a brand new beginner or with years of experience, you will gain insight into ways of deepening your dye practice. In addition to this, we have found that so much of the value of these programs is in building relationships with other creatives in our local community, celebrating turn of the seasons together, having access to beautiful gardens to tend and grow dye plants throughout the year, setting aside time for land based creativity, and coming together in the very human act of tending land collectively. Each month’s offering is designed to spawn years of study and experimentation, offering students enough experience and information to reproduce class results and confidently continue to develop their craft. Participants will take home a variety of dyed textiles and written resources each month and add samples and notes to our swatch books/ dyer’s journals to refer back to in what we hope becomes a lifelong beauty-making and nature connection practice of working with color from the earth.
Takeaways
Program Dates and Themes for 2026
Sessions run from 10am-4pm with time for lunch in the middle. Some classes may shift due to plant maturity, weather and the vagaries of working with the cycles.
March
Beginning, Seed, Raw, Pale, Blank, White, Equinox
In this early spring session of new beginnings, we will do the first tasks of awakening garden beds and sowing seeds, preparing textiles and raw fleece to receive all of the colors yet to come.
*We will create hand bound books to hold our color swatches for the seasonal round and will each take home a silk bandana/ hankie dyed with some of the garden’s gifts from last season.
3/21 Preparing beds and first seed sowing in our dye garden–indigo, cosmos, coreopsis, safflower, weld, madder, marigold, scabiosa and other plants for color and fiber. Learning propagation techniques and making planting plans. Hand binding a beautiful book to hold samples of our color explorations through the coming seasons.
3/22 Fiber preparation: cleaning, scouring, mordanting chemistry and practice. Discussing the ways that protein and cellulose fibers are treated to get the best results. Techniques we will use to prepare our textiles to take dye throughout the year. Dyeing silk in an immersion bath with last year’s flowers. Exploring mordanted vs unmordanted fibers.
April
Earth, Subtle, Foundational layers, Brown, Tan, Gray, Black
As the spring quickens, we will continue learning about dye plant cultivation and propagation, planting out what we seeded in the last session. We’ll explore the dyes contained in the abundance of spring pruned branches and the magic of tannins as dyes and binders. As we make our first iron bath from scratch, there will be a discussion of the age-old marriage between tannin and iron to make black and we will do our first explorations in natural ink making, exploring different ways of applying them to paper.
*We will each take home textile pieces dyed with the beautiful colors of bark and our first paper pieces made with our own natural inks, and a vial of ink with a simple carved dip pen. Everyone will also have the opportunity to take home dye plant starts for their own dye gardens.
4/11 Planting out indigo and dye flowers, practicing and discussing propagation and dye garden cultivation techniques. Exploring the place of tannins on the Dye/Mordant continuum. Preparing dye baths with spring barks- apple, poplar, alder, pear, plum. Starting our iron bucket and copper jar for modifiers, mordants, and inks. Distributing dye plants to take home.
4/12 Dying fiber swatches in our bark baths and using tannins to prepare cellulose fibers for future use, exploring the ink to dye continuum with avocado pit, acorns and oak galls. Making ink, carving quick dip pens+ stamps to decorate sample book covers and create natural ink painted/ printed postcards.
May
Emergence, Pleasure, Rainbow, First Harvest, Cross-Pollination
As the season warms and unfolds, we will continue to tend our garden, celebrating the development of the early leaves and the blossoming of the first flowers. We’ll capture the beautiful impressions of these early petals through bundle dyeing and Hapazome (flower pounding), and will explore immersion dye baths made from foraged plants and kitchen scraps which we will then extract lake pigments from.
*We will each take home a pair of natural fiber socks dyed with flower petals and an organic cotton Hapazome tote bag with fresh flower impressions.
5/4 Tending the garden and harvesting first flowers and leaves, flower petal bundle dyeing, immersion dye baths with early plants and kitchen harvests. Discussion of exhaust baths, and creation of lake pigments from our immersion dye baths.
5/5 More garden harvest and Hapazome with first flowers on cotton totes. Using our newly created pigment to paint and/or print on paper.
June
The Good Green Earth, Fullness, Solstice
As summer is almost upon us and we are surrounded by the lush greenery of this season, we will begin our study in capturing the impressions of fresh leaves on cloth through bundle dyeing. This will be a deep dive into multiple techniques used to get clear, crisp prints from leaves, with a discussion of the many ways to deepen and explore this craft. We will also experiment with other ways of conjuring green through creating a green nettle immersion dye bath, and will learn how to shift our bark dyed yellows from last month with iron. We will also begin to explore ways of creating pattern on textiles with shibori string resist.
*We will each take home at least two wearable textile pieces dyed with leaves and will have the chance to modify a piece from one of our immersion dye baths.
6/13 Tending the gardens and harvesting leaves and flowers for bundle dying (aka leaf printing, aka ecoprinting) and detailed introduction to bundle dying. Wrapping bundles with our harvest and steaming. Creation of a green nettle dye bath.
6/14 Exploration of learning from our first day of bundle dying, and more advanced approaches to compositional considerations, trouble-shooting, dipped leaves, blankets and cover cloths, plants as resists
July
Abundance, Golden Rainbow, Solar Energy, Aquamarine
As we gather at the height of summer, we celebrate the abundance and vigor of our gardens with a generous harvest of blossoms and leaves that give golden hues as well as our first big cutting of fresh indigo. We will create a rainbow of golden wool fiber to integrate into projects later in the season and will soak up our pots of gold on a handful of other textiles. We will also get our hands into some lush, fresh indigo and conjure stunning teals and blue greens with the salt extraction method.
*We will each take home silken textiles, one dyed golden and another aquamarine as well as each stashing a quantity of dyed wool fiber for future projects.
7/4 Tending our flourishing summer garden. Abundant flower and leaf harvests. First indigo harvest and feeding. Propagating indigo root cuttings. Preparing our dye pots of gold. Learning the fresh indigo salt extraction method on silk. Discussing and starting fresh indigo pigment fermentation. Green persimmon processing and fermentation for Kakishibu.
7/5 Dying the golden rainbow with our pots of gold. Exploring with the way that golden dyes take on a variety of fibers. Learning a format for dying with many plants at one time and being able to see the colors side by side. Shifting color with mordants and ph.
August
Blue Deep Dive, Contrast, Alchemy, Intuition
Join the Blue Hand Cult in an indigo immersion as the indigo plants reach their glorious apex. Exploring the special chemistry of indigo vats that turn green leaves into deep blue textiles. Indigo blue in history and lore. Discussion of several different types of indigo vats from around the world. Understanding the use of indigo dyeing on an array of textiles. Experimenting with pattern from shibori, dip dyeing, clay paste and rice paste resists. Discussion of how to conjure and store pigment from indigo.
*We will each take home numerous pieces of wearable and decorative textiles showcasing a range of techniques and visual effects all in a stunning, sought after range of indigo blue hues, as well as a jar of fermenting indigo leaves to experiment with pigment extraction at home
8/22 Harvest Indigo for pigment fermentation, demonstrate fermentation steps, fresh leaf ice dye, make an iron vat, sig vat discussion, take pigment jars home.
8/23 Finally, those coveted deep blues. Vat dips! Shibori patterns, Clay Paste Resist, optional hair dyeing, blue hands!
September
Red, Bloodlines, Ancestors, Endurance, Guiding Inevitable Transformation, Fermentation, Equinox
As seeds drop into the rich soil and plants begin to arch back towards the earth, we are called to explore the long red thread of ancestry, bloodlines, and the many human generations that have treasured the red dye of madder root. We will do a final harvest of indigo and some of our dye flowers, and will have the opportunity to continue adding layers of color to pieces from earlier in the season. We will tap into our own ancestry and reflect on this turn of the seasons. We will embark on a deep exploration of madder, the history and importance of the color red and the plant that yields it and have the opportunity to see its beauty on multiple different textiles and explore how it shifts with ph and iron. We will also explore pokeberry and Kakishibu persimmon dyes as part of our foray into the red rainbow.
*We will each take home a beautiful red satin silk bandana or scarf and will continue to build our fiber library of color.
9/12 Fall planting. Last indigo harvest. Taking leaves home for pigment fermentation experiments. Mordanting garments for bundle-dyeing. Making intuitive sugar vat with our pigment for silks. Overdyeing and garment dipping. Soaking and beginning the fermentation of the madder root.
9/13 Red Rainbow. The many shades of madder root, a temperature and pH sensitive dye that makes the world’s best reds. Overdipping with indigo for purples. Kakishibu persimmon application to cloth for a beautiful rust-colored dye and increased water and UV resistance. Pokeberry Pink.
October
Mycelial Growth, Feeding the Roots, Fecundity, Death and Rebirth, Return
As the leaves and nuts drop and the rains return, we sense the lace work patterns of mycelium awakening and flourishing beneath our feet. It is time to explore the wondrous world of Mushroom Dyes. We will go a-hunting for fungal treasures that grow upon the trees and beneath our feet, and with luck we will find gifts in the forest to expand our portfolio of color. We will focus on recording the mushroom’s hues on wool, as their affinity is strong. We will also explore the rich variety of browns given by black walnut hull dye and will have one last opportunity to immerse ourselves in bundle dying, this time with strong, sturdy, bioactive fall leaves.
*We will each take home a textile piece demonstrating the beautiful autumn hues of mushrooms, and will have the chance to upcycle bundle dye a garment or two from our closets.
10/24 Mushroom Hunting, location TBD. Basics of Mushroom foraging–ethics, location considerations, ecology of fungi, and how to ID common dye mushrooms.
10/25 Mushroom dyeing, hopefully with some of our own harvest! Introduction to these low-temperature, generally pH sensitive dyes that love wool. We’ll use fresh or dried, depending on our harvest success. Tending roots in the garden. Last big batch of bundle dying with strong, mature leaves on garments. Strategies for getting good prints on different shapes and types of textiles. Black walnut bath exploration.
November
Gratitude Practice, Creativity in the Season of Stillness, Laying to Rest
The season has turned and this last meeting will bring us into a cozy creative space to enjoy the fruits of our labor. We will revel in the glory of our myriad colorful fibers, pigments, and textile bits and will have space to create whatever we like with our hard- earned rainbow of materials. Lingering questions about process or material can be answered and explored. We will delve into needle felting as a medium for color and pattern, giving us the opportunity to work with our beautiful variety of woolen fibers. We will also explore the traditional gratitude practices of this season and will discuss many ways of giving thanks. We will each have time to contribute to a collaboratively woven craft piece made from our seasonal rainbow, which we will raffle off to benefit a cause that we agree upon. We will reflect on the ways that our lives and creative practices have become woven together through the wheel of the year, and finally we will close our circle with care and intention.
*We will each take home a needle felted project, recording the full turn of the year in color, as well as a variety of painted and printed goods made with our pigments and inks, and any number of altered and patterned dyed goods from our final explorations with our colorful creation from this year, as well as a whole community of fiber artist friends!
11/21 Putting garden beds to rest. Painting with our accumulated pigments, inks, and dyes. Doing final dips and modifications on previously dyed pieces. Working on a felted project to needle felt with our rainbow of fibers. Gratitude practice and sharing.
11/22 Working on our personal needle felting projects. Continued experiments and projects with our pigment collection. Collectively adding colorful bits of fiber from our seasons together to create a woven project for the community. Intentional closing of our time together and farewells.
Instructors
Ivy Stovall (she/her) delights in the abundance, patterns, and chaos of the natural world and of humanity. Her Interdisciplinary Humanities degree, two thirds of a biology degree at the University of West Florida, and her many travels launched her into work in outdoor education, which she began as a 4H camp naturalist, teaching outdoor skills and elementary and middle school science curriculum in the field. She has taught high and low ropes challenge courses, ESL at all grade levels, and developed independent art, adventure, and theater camps for kids. Currently Ivy manages Rewild Portland’s nursery and land tending project at our Green Anchors home base, weaving community around plants and practicing the art of gathering creatively, hosting educational and participatory community events. She lives and works at The MudHut Kulturhaus, her St. Johns urban permaculture homestead, where she shares her enthusiasm for outdoor living and hosts Rewild camps, classes and skillshares, music and theater, women’s groups, and community celebrations and ritual. She likes to always be harvesting and keeps her hands busy making herbal medicines, homebrews and fermentations, botanical inks, dyes and pigments, wild foods, basketry, and natural building. Always a student and always a teacher, Ivy enjoys contributing to and learning from the passionate people of the Rewild Portland community. Ivy loves the creativity, curiosity, and wildness of all people and is dedicated to the work of building healthy intergenerational communities connected to and through the natural world.
Erin Fahey (She/her) lives in the gorge east of Portland, in the lands of the Wasco and Wishram peoples, on a big river at the base of a big mountain. She is a land tender, maker, and teacher whose focus is connecting with the living world through craft. She is forever a dabbler, studying herbal medicine, basketry, botanical dyes, farming, and a myriad of other land based skills throughout her life. Her work is informed by curiosity, exploration of ancestry, and a deep reverence for the land. She feels that learning these ways teach us how to live in reciprocity and give us the opportunity to create a more beautiful, just world for this current moment and crucially, for future generations of life to inhabit as well. Her classes are an invitation to deepen our sense of place, and to do the very human work of creating beauty with our hands.
Registration
TUITION: $3,495 (Materials Included, read our Refund Policy here)