Natural Dye Workshop with Bella Gonshorovitz
Join Bella and Camille in the Thimble West Wales sewing studio for a day of discovering the art and joy of natural dying while creating a unique fabric collage to take home, which will be dyed using locally sourced colour.
Natural Dye Workshop with Bella Gonshorovitz
Date: 4th of June 2022
Location: West Wales, SA38 9BS
Time: 10am - 4pm
Price: £110
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Learn how to source and extract natural colours from kitchen scraps, foragables and cultivated plants in this Natural Dye Workshop with Bella Gonshorovitz, fashion practitioner, natural dyer and author of 'Grow, Cook, Dye, Wear - From seed to style the sustainable way' at Thimble Studios in West Wales
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This is the perfect workshop for those looking to explore natural dying within their creative practice. Bella is here to share her wealth of knowledge with you and leave you feeling confident to take on natural dying at home
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At the end of the day, you will have created a unique fabric collage with the naturally dyed fabric, which you can then use in a variety of ways such as a wall hanging, cushion cover or in your garment making
What You'll Learn on the Natural Dye Workshop
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how to extract colour from the dyestuff you collect and the dyestuff provided
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how to prepare different fabrics for the dye process and the process of shifting tones
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eco-printing with natural dyes
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best practices for naturally dying fabric for sewing projects or pre-loved garments and a wider discussion about how this practice sits in the quest to enjoying fashion in a more sustainable way
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We will be providing preloved fabrics such as French linen bedsheets and cotton tablecloths on the day, however if you wish to bring your own fabric scraps that you would like to also dye on the day to include in your fabric collage, then please get in touch for pre-dye treatment instructions.
Before the Natural Dye Workshop
Dyestuff will be provided on the day, however if you would like to collect and bring your own dyestuff for our Natural Dye workshop – there is nothing like seeing how waste from your kitchen or locally sourced plants produce colour – you are more than welcome to.
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We will be working with kitchen scraps, foraged and cultivated plants. You can start collecting these in advance of the workshop, and we recommend the following in the different categories.
Kitchen scraps
Red and brown onion skins (the papery part, which doesn’t include the onion ‘meat’), avocado skins and stones, pomegranate skin, turmeric peel (clean well and dry or freeze),
walnut husks, tea bags
Foraged (all of these can be dried)
Stinging Nettle, sorrel, hawthorn, bracken, rose hip, eucalyptus, birch leaves and bark, hollyhocks, alder leaves and bark, heather, ivy (leaves and berries), juniper, comfrey, dandelion
Cultivated (all of these can be dried)
marigold, daffodils, coreopsis, madder (roots of mature 2+ years plants), weld, apple, pear, cherry and plum tree leaves and bark, rhubarb crown and leaves, tansy – All these can be dried.
We would love to know beforehand which dyestuffs you will be bringing so we can be prepared with the correct agents etc. Please get in touch if you have any questions regarding collecting and storing the dyestuff.
Spaces are limited to 7 participants per class to provide the ultimate learning experience​
More about Bella Gonshorovitz
Bella is a multidisciplinary fashion practitioner, author, natural dyer and allotment plot grower (all things we love here at Thimble!). Her debut book 'Grow, Cook, Dye, Wear - From seed to style the sustainable way' was published in 2022 by DK/Penguin Random House and can be purchased here.
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Bella's book captures her miniature circular economy process through the prism of five crops: grow-your-own and foraging advice; vegan recipes for the harvest; instructions to creating natural dye from the cooking waste and full-size patterns with sewing instructions to creating your own Onion dress, Nettle duster, Rhubarb bolero, Blackberry shirtdress and Cabbage shorts. She is currently working on her next books ‘The Living Wardrobe’ and ‘Memory Clothes’.
More Information
Price
The Natural Dye Workshop with Bella Gonshorovitz is £110. Payment plans are available here.
Please familiarise yourself with our Terms & Conditions before booking.
What's included
A light shared lunch, teas and coffee on tap, fruits and snacks.
Fabric scraps and dyestuff will be provided but feel free to bring your own also.
Prefer a payment plan?
Would you prefer to spread the cost of the Natural Dye Workshop with Bella Gonshorovitz over multiple payments?
No problem, you can spread the cost over two months by clicking below. Any more, and you'll need to get in touch with me to arrange this.
GoCardless is a third party website I use to manage payment plans for my sewing classes.
Simply register your details when prompted after clicking below.
Registering for a payment plan will automatically enrol you on the course, and so the same cancellation policy applies.