Textile Arts Center

     As I have mentioned before, I am completely textile obsessed. When I came to New York, one of my main goals was to explore this interest outside of work. After doing some research, I came across the Textile Arts Center in Brooklyn, a studio and classroom space for everything textiles (otherwise known as my dream come true!). I instantly knew that I had to sign up for classes.
     The Textile Arts Center offers so many diverse classes that it was hard to choose! They teach everything from loom weaving to soap felting, and it is unbelievable that they offer so much with such little space. One of my main textile related interests is natural dyeing, which is the process of dyeing that uses only natural dye stuff, such as plants or rust. I have always wanted to learn how to make my own dye vats and extract my own natural dyes, so I signed up for the Surface Design with Natural Dyes. This class would teach me the basics of extracting color and dyeing with natural dyes. I also signed up for a Shibori class because I love everything Japanese and wanted to give it a try.
     A few weeks ago, I attended the Shibori class and absolutely loved it. The class had eight other students, so it was relatively small. This lead to a lot of one-on-one instruction, which really helped with our final products. Shibori is a Japanese indigo dyeing technique that uses binding, pleating and/or shape blocks to achieve a specific pattern. All Shibori patterns are based on nature. Some of the patterns we learned in class were based on mountains, spiderwebs, and tortoise shells. Once we learned each pattern, we all chose our favorite to use in our project. I chose to do the mountain pattern because I felt like it represented me the best. Obviously, I got very spiritual with my Japanese dyeing, so I took my project very seriously. After accidentally choosing the hardest pattern and being the last one to finish binding my project, I was able to submerge my project into the indigo dye vat.
     In my opinion, indigo is one of the most interesting dyes because of its oxidation process. Indigo is the dye used to color denim, so you would expect the indigo dye to be blue at all times, however this is not the case. When indigo dye oxidizes (touches oxygen and reacts) it actually turns green! This was very fun to watch, and the high school science geek within me went a little wild. Once the dye turns back to blue, you wait awhile and then re-submerge your project into the vat a few more times to reach a rich indigo color once your project is washed out and dried.
     I had so much fun with this class, and it confirmed that I want to pursue dyeing as a hobby. Unfortunately, my natural dyeing class got cancelled due to low enrollment (still sad), but I plan to teach myself this exciting process. I am more than happy with how my Shibori project turned out. I would post a picture because I'm so proud of it, but it's a gift to my boyfriend so I don't want to spoil what it actually is. Of course I told him everything about the class except that detail because I was too excited to wait to tell him! I recommend the Textile Arts Center for anyone interested in textiles. My class was amazing, and my teacher definitely knew what she was doing. I hope everyone enjoyed my mini science lesson! :)