Plant Dye Recipe and Tutorial: How to Make a Jewelweed Dye
How to make a plant dye with jewelweed in an easy to follow natural dye tutorial.
The Healing Colors of Plant Dyes
No matter where you live in the world we are all blessed with an abundance of local, beautiful, and vibrant dye plants. Whether they are growing wild or cultivated in gardens even the casual natural dyer knows that there are…
Bark Harvesting and Processing of Four Northeastern Trees
This summer was my first working with trees for basketry. I set out to try several different species and learn what I could about selecting trees, removing the outer bark, stripping the inner bark, and preparing it for weaving. Overall…
Harvesting White Ash Inner Bark for Basketry
Adventures in Bark Basketry After learning how to use bark in basketry during my internship in Asheville this winter my big project for this year became incorporating bark into my repertoire of natural materials. Although I processed already harvested bark and learned…
Baskets Galore! A Gallery of Natural Baskets from my 2015 Internship with Matt Tommey
Like the title indicates this is a sample of some of my favorite baskets that I made during three months this winter while I lived in Asheville, NC and interned with artist Matt Tommey in his River Arts District studio…
55 Watercolor Paintings of Feathers in 2014!
I have a special place in my heart for birds and have collected many beautiful feathers over the past several years from all over the country. Almost since the beginning I aspired to do watercolor paintings of these treasures, but…
Weaving Baskets in the Land of the Pine
Since graduating from college with my BFA I've been looking for ways to continue my education in the fields that I love the most--- natural dyes, basketry, and working with natural, wild crafted materials to make fine art. Well, for…
Experiments with Nettle Dye, Take Two
Last year I posted a recipe for making dye with Stinging Nettles. to check out that post click here. The dye bath from last year turned out to be a lovely, yet light color. I had harvested in the late spring once the nettles…
Fun With Mushroom Dyes
This past month I was lucky to be able to take a workshop on Mycopigments-- or using mushrooms for dyes. If you want to schedule one for your town or learn anything about mushrooms for dye then go to the…
Indigo Fever: Japanese Indigo Dye Photos from Summer 2013
As I prepare for the new growing seasons, sow my natural dye seeds and research recipes it seems like the perfect time to share photos from my experiments with Japanese Indigo from last summer. It was my first time growing…