Wash and Dye Workshop

I'm lucky enough to live relatively close (about an hour) from Sarafina Fiber Art, a great source for felting and fiber art supplies.  Sara, the owner, has also posted numerous tutorials for different felting projects online.  Sarafina offers workshops for things like wet felting, needle felting, dyeing, and painting.  I took one of those workshops last weekend.

The Wash & Dye Fiber Processing workshop was a blast.  We learned how to dye different fibers and we all went home with our own fiber art bundle.  Each person picked through several different types of fibers to find a blend of things we wanted in our bundle.  There were a lot of choices.

We made cards with the name and a sample of each fiber.  Then we picked an inspiration photo and made a plan for the dye pot.

Sara had quite a few options of dyes available.

We also washed part of a Cormo fleece, to practice working with raw fleece.

Then we prepped our fibers for the dye pot.  The fibers went into a soaking bath with citric acid.

Then the fibers went into the pot (with more citric acid), and the different dyes were poured in quadrants.

Then the fibers were put in a rinse bath with vinegar.

Then we spun the fiber dry in this nifty laundry spinner!

The fiber art bundles were set in the sun to finish drying.

This is mine, below.  I have a project in mind for it, and hopefully I'll get to work on it soon.

While I was there, I drooled a bit over all the wool in their warehouse!  This picture below was only one small part of the fiber stash!

It was a fun afternoon, and I've been bitten by the dye bug. I can't wait to do more of this!