garden garments in chennai

hi folks! i got lots of great photos to share from our two part natural dyeing workshop held in chennai last week. the word was put out to the reStore Chennai listserve, and there was a great response. the workshop was full of ten lovely ladies (and one little lady named isha), who each brought something beautiful to the table. our colors were vibrant. inspiring two days for all!! i'm going to break up my posts by each color that we used, starting with turmeric, a classic. happy dyeing!

turmeric/manjal dye

probably the easiest of all the dyes is turmeric. especially in india, where it is so abundant. turmeric is one of the few dyes that you can prepare in a cold bath - no energy is needed to heat the dye stuff. we simply put 100 grams of turmeric powder in this bucket of cold water. used rubber bands to create resist patterns and then dropped our cloth inside. we left our fabric overnight, just to soak in the color. no mordant used on this cotton, which was actually an old veshti!