Making clothes attracted me because it empowered me to make something that does not exist in relation to “the box.” The box is everything that goes into making clothes in the tens of thousands. Global supply chains, margins, standardized sizing, attractive pricing. All of it. When I wear clothes I make myself, I try to communicate to the world that what is on me has nothing to do with the box. Rejecting that standardization makes anything feel possible.
We are blessed in New Orleans with more options for fabric than most cities of this size. But we are still a small city, and there is only so much demand. Dyeing, especially patterning and printing on fabric, gave me an opportunity to go a layer deeper. To feel like I was not only making the garment, but defining the textile it was made from.
Below are some of the dye project I’ve enjoyed most.
//Visual Vernacular
At some point, I started creating visual alphabets, where I tried to capture a feeling or an identity in abstract symbols, and then figure out what I considered the prime symbols to be. I often draw from history, but I wanted to define a base language for myself that represented how my brain worked.
During indigo week at Material Institute, I took a large cut of medium weight twill and brushed soy paste onto the fabric in preparation for resist dyeing. I dipped the fabric twice in the indigo vat, washed out the soy paste, and dipped it one more time to dye the areas that didn’t take dye slightly as well.
Many of my peers insisted I keep the fabric as a tapestry, but I didn’t frame the edge as neatly and I’d like. The inherent warp of the twill was hard to fully straighten out, so I didn’t want to display it as a tapestry. Instead, I drafted a trouser pattern one morning and by the evening made these trousers. The material was a little short, so I cropped the leg and kept it roomy on the way down.
//Fresh Leaf
During indigo week, we went across the street to the 24 carrot garden and harvested fresh indigo. It takes maybe 100 pounds of fresh leaf indigo to produce a pound of fermented indigo. Harvesting it gave me a better understanding of how precious the fermented powder is.
We took the indigo back to the dye lab, separated the leaves, and rubbed it into silk with salt and water. The result was a seafoam green I absolutely loved.
//Heart of the Madder
I learned in October about red madder, and its place in the history of my people. Before I dyed the wool silk blend yarn used to embroider my mother’s jumpsuit, I had a chance to dye muslin and silk with madder. I color matched a worn out acetate lining on a vest I tailored and replaced it with madder dyed silk.
I make clothes to reject so many of the things we are surrounded and assaulted by: conformity and uniformity, industrialization, dehumanization. Making clothes to me has always been a response to and couched in the feeling of this time. Natural dyeing, on the other hand, feels like a reversion, like going back. Not figuring out how to move through this world and to combat its imperious forces, but to imagine what it felt like in a world before they existed.
//Aboubakar Fofana
Aboubakar Fofana hosted a multi day indigo and mud dyeing intensive for the Material Institute cohort. He brought with him a few of the most precious things I’ve ever held.
One was finimugu, a traditional Malian strip cloth. It was made from Malian cotton that was then spun by hand nearby. A master spinner needed a month to roll a bobbin. Then, it was loomed into narrow strips. The strips can be joined to make garments. The width of the garment, measured in the number of strips, held varying significances. To hold fabric that was grown with heirloom cotton and then spun and loomed by hand remains indescribable to me. Now, when I work with factory made textiles, they feel two dimensional to me.
The other precious thing Aboubakar brought was mud from the Niger river. Traveling the length of the river, he heard through locals in one area of a location that may have good mud for dyeing. He sought an area that had the right kind of overhanging vegetation. The vegetation would fall into the water, decompose, and produce a rich, fine silt that was ideal for dyeing. He worked with locals who harvested the mud by hand in large, heavy pots, wading through waters where crocodile attacks are common. The pots were so heavy that when they reached the dock, the mud had to be scooped out by hand, as the whole vessel couldn’t be moved in one go. The fabric was treated first with African Birch, so soak it in tannins that would bind to the iron in the river mud.
//French Terry Staples
I seldom work with cut and sew knits, for a host of reasons. For one of our assignments as Material Institute, we had make a t shirt from a lovely cotton french terry. I messed up the neck countless times, and struggled with the shoulders too.
After cutting the material, there was a leftover strip, and I dyed them both in our indigo vat. I bound the shirt by hand at the sleeves and in the center near the chest. I didn’t realize, but the strip of terry was inside the shirt when I dyed it, and ended up producing a resist pattern of its own.
I share them both not because they’re among my favorite dye projects, but because of the satisfaction in seeing them in regular use. Vanessa took to the material immediately, and loves wrapping her hair in the terry strip if it’s still wet. The fit, color, and design of the shirt work for her, and apparently for Milo and Tiger Lilly, her two cats.
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