indigo and weaving workshop

Last October I went to Arrowmont in Gatlinburg, Tennessee for The Surface Design conference:  Made Aware.

 

Beautiful country, best time of the year to see the Great Smoky mountains.

The craft school is a big rambling campus on the side of the hill ... but just around the corner is a

bustling tourist town with lots of shopping and restaurants.  But there was no need to eat out, the dining hall at Arrowmont was great.  Housing was like college dorm life only quieter.  In fact, the a/c in my room was not working so they found me a new one right away.

There was a juried fiber art exhibition at the same time and I really enjoyed the time to carefully study each one. 

The facilities were fabulous work spaces and the workshops offered were taught by talented experts in their fields. 

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I had such a wonderful time and learned so much about indigo and ikat weaving.  The workshop was team taught by Sara Goodman and Mary Zigafoose, tapestry weaver. Sara taught us how to develop two indigo vats - one with henna and one with fructose.  I tried a small vat when I was back at home and I proved the rule - you really have to deal with the pot every day.  Mine died a sad death when I went out of town for two weeks.  I poured off the water and kept the blue dregs and my plan to see if I can revive it during this indigo month.  I'll keep you up to date on that.  The photo below is not my vat, this is Sara stirring the indigo/henna vat at Arrowmont. 

I brought home an ikat dyed cotton warp and weft and I'll be putting that on one of my looms and finally seeing how well that worked out.  First ikat project we did in class was tapestry design using wool as the weft - the looms were mostly warped for us when we arrived.

My wool ikat was mediocre - more on that in another post. The dye seeped under the green ikat tape so my edges were not super crisp - lesson learned.  When I began the second project in cotton, I wrapped that tape reeaallly tight. I can't wait to weave up this narrow cotton band.