I’ve always enjoyed arts and crafts but I hadn’t dabbled in anything much for a long time until I got a gig writing for Skillshare. For a glorious year, I got to watch how-to videos on watercolour painting and embroidery and resin art and macrame and all sorts of wonderful crafts that I thought would be my next big thing. While I don’t have that writing gig anymore, it did prompt me to get back into a variety of crafts. Or at least, I have a lot of hand-knitted scarves to show for this re-found passion.
This desire to be creative beyond my writing work has also prompted me to sign up for a bunch of in-person classes, which, to be honest, are always more satisfying than online classes. Last week I began a 6-week fabric dying course at the Nelson Women’s Centre. It’s led by a retired professional fabric artist who has won New Zealand’s prestigious wearable arts award several times and is now generously sharing her knowledge with the women of Nelson.
Last week we learned a traditional Japanese shibori technique of dyeing by scrunching fabric up on a cylinder and dipping it in a vat of (plant-based) dye. The instructor is extremely knowledgeable about Japanese dyeing, and there was another woman in the class who lived in Japan for 35 years, so I kept (relatively) quiet about my 19 months living there in 2007-08.
This is what I produced:
While I actually prefer the more sophisticated indigo hues of traditional shibori dyeing, I figured this was my first project and more of an experiment than a final piece, so I’d have some fun. Hence these garish pink socks. I would have lost them to my five-year-old daughter if they’d fit her. In the next few weeks we’ll be working on other projects and I’d love to try making something a little more sophisticated, but for now my feet are happy.