When attending this workshop, you will need to bring the following articles:

1. Wool blanket material. This is available in many op shops. Any wool material or clothing. Skeins of wool.

2. Silk material or/and clothing.

3. Some cotton material/clothing.

4. Strong threads. Embroidery threads. String /fabric strips to tie bundles.

5. Sewing kit, including scissors, needles and pins.

6. Note Book , biro and pencil, camera.

7. Found objects, such as shells with texture and ridges, bits of drift wood, gumnuts, rusty objects such as bolts, bottle tops, bits of copper pipe and other copper bits bent rusty wire just to name a few.

8. A bucket, gloves, some old towels and some plastic bags to put your dyed fabrics in.

 

If you would be able to start saving onion skins, walnut shells/husks, gumnuts, wattlebark and wattle seed pods, New Zealand Flax flowers, maple leaves, dahlia flowers, coreopsis flowers and elderberries would be great. Flowers and berries can be frozen.  You don’t have to save all of the above, just what you can, if you can. I also would like to encourage you to look at no 7 of the requirements list and start collecting. Metals bind natural dyes to cloth and make for interesting effects.

 

We will be mainly using wool and silk as that takes natural dyes best. But to bring some cotton is okay as some dyes do dye cotton. The colours are not as strong as the animal fibres.