Join Aaron at Sumac Cottage for a day of learning how to grow your own color.
Aaron will walk us through the process of planning, planting, and maintaining a dye garden, as well as best methods for harvesting and storing dye materials that you can use in your craft. We'll begin by discussing options for long-lasting, homegrown color, sourcing seeds, and creating a planting/gardening schedule. Then, we'll cover how to source seeds and start them indoors—including heating mats, grow lights, watering methods and making our own seed starting mix. While we'll focus on several typical plants used for natural dyeing (such as indigo, marigolds, and madder), the skills you'll learn can be applied to a number of plants. We'll end the course with a showcase from Aaron which will demonstrate how to begin using these plants to create color, and participants will be able to experiment with color as well.
Participants will leave with dyed fabric samples, dye plant starts previously started by Aaron, seed-starting mix, and a small tray of seeds that the participants will plant in class. Participants are encouraged to bring gardening gloves and to wear clothing that can get messy.
