THE SEASONAL COLOR BOUQUET
AT SHEGROWS FARM WITH Sasha Duerr

workshop details

no experience necessary
 

 

During two beautifully colorful and creativity-filled days, we’ll create a gorgeous natural dye palette with ingredients from a farm-grown seasonal bouquet. We’ll learn how to forage floral hues from the plentiful gardens and explore natural dye techniques from the flowers and even weeds onsite. This two-day retreat will encourage and support the abundance possible through everyday sources, conceptual inspiration for curating color combinations, and practical routes to creating place-based and zero-waste natural palettes.

These natural color techniques and recipes can be used in an abundance of ways, whether in your own art and design practice, or to imbue your everyday textiles and garments with vibrant, meaningful, and unique colors through natural plant-based palettes.

Exploring the practical and poetic aspects of plant-based colors, we’ll delve into the beauty of ‘slowness’ and seasonality, and quite literally the overlaps between slow florals and slow textiles. Our workshop sessions will instill the depth and possibility to renew the awe of the everyday, connecting us to the potential of holistic hues. Students will take home a beautiful palette of swatches we create together, larger sample textiles, a beautiful bouquet of ingredients to create dyes at home, as well as a set of linen napkins and a silk/wool wrap dyed in our unique seasonal floral palette we create together at SHEGROWS Farm.

WHAT YOU WILL LEARN:

  • How to map and identify and forage for natural dye plants - including from seasonal sources and floral waste, medicinal plants, plus local and seasonal weeds. 

  • Cooking with Color techniques to make beautiful natural dyes from scratch.

  • Modifying and expanding our color palettes. 

  • Surface design techniques

    • Shibori Techniques

    • Steam Printing + Bundle Dyeing

    • Direct Application for Printing and Painting  

  • Regenerative and circular design methods - overlapping slow food and slow fashion and textiles.

MATERIALS PROVIDED:

  • All natural dye ingredients and fiber materials will be provided. 

  • Recipe cards and resources for all dyes we will create together. 

  • A natural color palette we create together, swatches and larger naturally dyed samples, and take-home textiles.

  • A set of 4 linen napkins and a silk/wool wrap dyed in a palette from SHEGROWS Farm. 

  • Seasonal Color Wheel - Colorado

  • Signed copy of Sasha’s book Natural Color

  • Special flower dye seed packet

WHAT TO BRING:

  • Your favorite garden gloves *optional

  • Apron and/or smock *optional

  • Closed toe shoes

  • An open mind and heart


ONSITE AND IN THE STUDIO: 

  • Wear clothes and shoes practical for foraging, cooking, and dyeing.

  • Closed-toed shoes for dyeing. Aprons and/or smocks are encouraged.

  • Practical outdoor clothing and layers for rain or shine.

  • Mindfulness for working with plants and onsite. 

 
 
 
 

SASHA DUERR is an artist, designer and educator who works with plant-based color and natural palettes. Sasha centers her practice and research on the collaborative color potential of weeds, food and floral waste, and local and seasonal ingredients. Teaching for over a decade at California College of the Arts with a joint appointment in Textiles and Fine Arts,  Sasha lectures, consults and widely designs curriculum and courses in the intersection of natural color, slow food, slow fashion and social practice. In 2007, Sasha founded Permacouture Institute to encourage the exploration of regenerative design practices for fashion and textiles.  From "Dinners to Dye For" to "Weeding Your Wardrobe" and "Seasonal Color Wheels" her extensive work with plant-based color palettes has been featured in the New York Times, American Craft Magazine,Domino, Elle Decor Uk, Selvedge, and the Huffington Post. Sasha is the author of The Handbook of Natural Plant Dyes (Timber Press/Workman 2011) NATURAL COLOR (Watson-Guptill/Ten Speed Press 2016) and NATURAL PALETTES (Princeton Architectural Press 2020).

*images by Sasha Duerr