Edible Vancouver Island May/June 2024

For anyone curious about the process of working with naturally dyed textiles, Vallee regularly hosts weaving parties at her Madeira Park studio on the Sunshine Coast and workshop pop ups across BC. You can find a schedule of events on her website. dip into dyes

Another local designer, Christine Wieting, the Salt Spring-based maker behind SeaDog Designs, has also fallen in love with natural dyes, specifically avocado pits. She uses pits repurposed from kitchen waste sourced from Dos Amores Tortilleria to produce warm tans and peach blushes across the dresses, kimonos and pillowcases in her collections. A LABOUR OF LOVE One thing was clear after speaking with both Vallee and Wieting: dyeing naturally is a long and often meandering process. Nothing is as simple as a quick dip in a dye vat for a bright, colour-fast final product. Take Wieting's process of dying with avocado pits as an example of why you can't expect to complete a piece in a day. SeaDog Designs is a decidedly slow fashion enterprise, especially when Wieting uses the natural dyeing process. For her, "It takes at least a week of each day doing a little bit of work: making the dye one day, soaking it, hanging it to dry, putting the elastic band design on it and soaking it in soda ash. Then the next day you add the colour, then hand paint it." Over a dozen steps result in a one-of-a-kind kimono with hand-painted detailing. Vallee's process for dyeing her line of organic wool yarns requires just as much patience, if not more. In her case, finishing a skein of yarn can take upwards of a month thanks to the dozen or more steps, including mordanting (a process to improve light and wash fastness), dyeing, washing, curing and several stages of drying. All these steps, while critical to the outcomes, are also what make natural dyeing so fascinating. There is a lot of tinkering between the ingredients, fabrics and techniques, and there are often many rounds of experimentation. But that's all part of the magic with natural dyes. They all have unique personality traits that you have to learn to get along with. It takes time to understand each ingredient’s quirks–but for those with patience, the payoffs are incomparable. THE ALLURE OF NATURAL DYES When was the last time you heard anyone wax poetic about diphenylmethane de rivatives or triphenylmethane, two common ingredients in the synthetics industry? Yet when fibre artists and designers speak about natural dyes, they light up as they describe every single nuance within the process and the palette. Vallee explains, "I just tend to prefer the way natural dyes look but as an artist, they're very convenient; they always harmonize with each other. So no matter what I do, it looks good. There's no clashing that happens." Another benefit for Vallee is that when she teaches weaving workshops, she doesn't have to focus so much on colour theory because the naturally dyed yarns all seamlessly flow together. Wieting specifically saves the natural process for her specialty collections, going all-in on avocado pits. As she says of the colour, "It's so unexpected, you really wouldn't expect it to be that pinky-peach. It's such a beautiful colour, and you can't really replicate it with non natural dyes. It's really special." Both Wieting and Vallee are unanimous in their love for dyeing with botanicals. As Vallee says, "It's a preference of palette," but for both artists, it's clear that it's also the thoughtful and meditative process that has drawn them into its warm embrace.

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Jessica McKeil is a writer who lives, eats and explores from her home base of Salt Spring Island, Canada. When not writing she’s out in the woods collecting foraged wild botanicals for all kinds of crafty projects.

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