Handspun, handwoven

Days 1-3: picture heavy post. Go take a shower while it loads. Days 1-3: I took a wonderful class from Michele Wipplinger entitled "The Color of Culture". We covered mud cloth from Mali, cochineal, lac and madder from both the Old and New World, and indigo from different cultures. First, the mud cloth. She brought in some examples to inspire us. These are made by the women, with mud + other ingredients, and painted on the handspun, handwoven cloth with a stick. The cloth was premordanted with alum, and we painted on some tannin. The women use the traditional method of making the design using the negative space (white part). The men do quicker versions using the dark areas of the cloth for design, for sale to tourists. The symbols all have meaning, but Michele said some of the meanings are secret, so if they tell you the meaning of a symbol, you don't know if that's really the meaning or not.
The shirt below is embellished with snips of tin from a tin can, hammered flat.
Here are some examples from our class
Another one from class
This one's mine (below). In looking at the examples of cloth she brought, if there are borders on the cloth, they are not the same side. Some border designs are for wearing close to the body, and others are for wearing away from the body. In a couple of weeks I have to brush off the mud and repaint. And repeat. And maybe repeat again. My mud is not very dark, so it will take several applications to stain the fabric.
Onward to color. These are silk skeins, all dyed with natural dyes.
Various reds, from madder, lac, and cochineal. Cochineal gives red towards the violet side, madder towards the orange side, and lac is the truest red. None of these are our samples, but we did sample skeins of all 3 colors in both silk and cotton.

Blues and related colors (greens). We did an indigo bath on the last day. None of these are our samples, but we did blues and greens. I did a shibori shawl which is still curing. When it's ready I'll show the process.
Indigo dyed cloth

I went to Convergence with my sister J and my friend D. We asked for a rollaway bed. They sure are different in Michigan than in the south. Thank goodness for the strap.

Sure was hard to turn over, though.
This is what we looked like by the end of Convergence. Completely drained.
And more than just a little punchy.

Other days to follow.