Julie Beeler conceived of the Bloom & Dye workshop series to grow her work and passion to benefit what she values most: curiosity, education, creativity, collaboration, community, and the environment.
Often forgotten in the realm of textiles, mushrooms have long been used as natural dyes, yielding some of nature's most vibrant colors. Learn to use fungi to create beautiful, vibrant, and nontoxic dyes perfect for any natural fiber. We will spend Saturday in the forest, learning about and foraging for dye mushrooms. I will walk students through the mushroom identification process and teach us how to locate dye mushrooms using environmental indicators. On Sunday I will go through various dye techniques, as students explore the myriad of shades these forest friends offer us. Students will leave with an understanding of how to find, forage for and identify dye mushrooms, wool fiber samples for the rainbow of colors they create, a large hand-dyed kerchief, and an instructional craftbook including mushroom dye recipes.
