2025 and later — bundle dyeing

One of my favorite plant based processes in slow fashion & textile art is painting and print making. I work with a variation of a centuries old “oak gall ink” recipe that is made of oak galls and iron salts. This process starts with making an ink using iron salts, vinegar, and a thickener. The curing of ink requires two baths, one of which I use gallo tannins. This plant extract is from gall nuts or oak galls, which are fibrous growths on oak trees that the tree creates once a wasp has laid its eggs on a branch. The wasp later drills itself out of...

I was so excited to witness all the plant life in Costa Rica last summer that I brought a scoured and mordanted piece of cotton and some string so that I might bundle dye a bandana from the fallen flowers I come across. Let me be clear I had no intention and did not remove any plant matter from any forests, I only collected flowers along roadsides and neighborhoods that had fallen, along with 1 achiote pod from the farm I stayed on, with permission.  So, during our first week, I gathered bright crimson hibiscus, bougainvillea, and other bold and...