INDIGO DYE WITH MAGIE RELPH

This month’s meeting was a talk by Magie Relph on African Indigo Dyed fabrics. She brought with her a wonderful array of pieces which demonstrated the many techniques and these were admired greatly by the members who later spent some time purchasing items from her shop!
We now look forward to seeing some of the things made from all these fabrics, beads and braids ladies – remember they are not for stashing away in your ever growing pile of goodies, they are for using, so do let us see what you make and we will show the finished items on the blog – sometime in the not too distant future we hope!!

Magie gave us an outline to the history of Indigo which comes from a plant that is native to every continent apart from Australia and Antarctica.
We of course used WOAD many years ago, but we were told that there is a thin stick of an Indigo plant with a few leaves, growing in Yorkshire (Magie’s garden) and quite a bit more in the garden of a friend in Macclesfield. She hopes that in years to come she might have enough to produce her own dye!!

Magie had researched the history of Indigo which went back to well before Egyptian times and was prized by Pharoahs and Kings.
The solid blocks of dye were brought back to Europe by the pre-industrial revolution trading companies before synthetic Indigo was put on the market in 1897. It was even purer than the plant dye.
It became the dye of the working people (blue collar workers) and was used to dye the denim for Jeans.

Magie showed some fascinating slides and then demonstrated the African process of tie-dyeing a ‘Sunburst’ pattern – first you take your shoes off and sit on the floor (could be difficult for some).

Then you put your heel into the point of a square of damp cloth, folded into four.

Then holding the fabric in your left hand, about half way down the fabric, you pull small folds from the right to the left side – with me so far??

Then removing your heel from the point you use a piece of thread to tie up towards the point, from the bottom of the folded area.
When that has been done you scrunch up the remaining fabric and tie at random with more thread.

If you have followed that, the resulting piece will look like this!!

After dyeing and drying – opening up is the fun part when you discover how well you followed these instructions. Magie had dyed this piece in an almost spent vat of dye to give this resulting pale finish.

Such an exciting talk that 5 members have decided to do one of her workshops this summer. There may be photo’s later.