Hello! It’s been 48 hours since I arrived back home in Melbourne from my work / play holiday in Japan. I’m slowly sifting through my photos and writing a series of blog posts about some of the places I visited and the experiences I had while there.

If you’ve been following me on instagram  then you will have seen a preview of the amazing places I visited that relate to textiles, shibori and indigo dyeing. Well, you’re in luck if you also want to see the extended story of my trip. Over the next few weeks I’ll share info and images from my journey which I hope will help anyone out there in internet land who is planning a trip to Japan to explore traditional Japanese textile crafts.

If you haven’t been following me on instagram, check it out via the sidebar for a preview of what I have coming up, or just follow along here! I’ll be posting bi-weekly until I’ve covered all the places I’ve visited that i think you’ll find interesting.

Today is a pretty amazing day. Today I am interviewed on The Design Files!!!!

You can read the interview here.

It’s really wonderful to have my work profiled on a blog that celebrates innovation, good design and creativity.

Thanks very much to the team at TDF for enjoying my work and sharing my story, it’s a dream come true!

It’s been a whirlwind frenzy of activity at my place lately, but I wanted to look back at the indigo shibori workshops I held recently at the Cecilia Fox warehouse in Brunswick.

Being able to hold the workshops in such a large bright space was really wonderful, and as always, I learned a great deal from my students, as well as they hopefully learned from me! At any rate a lot of fun was had by all, and a lot of great shibori and indigo dyeing was done. A huge thank you to everyone who came along to the workshops, you guys really made it great!

I am currently trying to work out dates for some workshops in the new year, so if you are keen sign up to my mailing list over in the right sidebar to be the first to know!

I was lucky enough to have the wonderful Lillie Thompson come along to take some snaps at the first workshop to remember the day by, so consider this a picture heavy post!

The photos below were taken by me at the second workshop :)

Today I am speaking all about my love of Indigo on The Planthunter.

You can check out my story here!

A quick reminder as well, I have 2 workshops coming up this month, both held at the Cecilia Fox warehouse. It’s a fabulous space, and I’m really looking forward to sharing my skills knowledge, bad jokes and day with everyone. There are only a few spaces left in each class, so sign up now! It’s possible that I may not find time in schedule to do another workshop before the end of the year, so if you’re holding out for a later date, don’t wait! I’m not sure when the next workshop will be. Click here to book.

I’ve been looking for some time for a wonderful space to run my workshops in. Something large, light filled, and indoors.  Something centrally located near public transport in a vibrant inner city suburb. It is with great pleasure that I share with you that I have found all of this and more in the new Cecilia Fox warehouse in Brunswick.

Mel, the woman behind Cecilia Fox has recently landed herself an AMAZING new warehouse and is welcoming my classes to her new space. Her light filled warehouse is located in Brunswick very close to the Sydney Rd tram (19), and lots of great shops and cafes. It’s a wonderfully open and enormous space, with plenty of room for all the shibori and Indigo you can dream of. ALL of it.

Now I know it doesn’t seem possible that it could get any better, BUT IT DOES.

The super talented Julia Ostro who makes incredible cakes, tarts, donuts, and every other glorious thing you can imagine eating, is going to keep our tummies full with her creations. Each workshop will enjoy one of her seasonally baked creations, along with a fruit platter, and of course tea and coffee.

The class itself covers how to set up an Indigo vat and I demonstrate a few different techniques. After the initial instructional part of the class,  you’ll explore your creative side and I will be available to answer any and all questions as the class progresses. Everyone is supplied with a silk scarf, a tea towel and scrap fabric, so you can try out your chosen technique before creating your pièce de résistance!

Participants are invited to bring in natural cloth or yarn from home to dye in the vat if they’d like to, and further materials are available for purchase during the class.  At the end of the day, you go home with your own Indigo masterpiece, and if you’d like to explore the wonderful world of Indigo further (and frankly, who wouldn’t want to?) you can purchase an indigo kit (coming soon to the shop for workshoppers!) and keep going with all you have learned.

There are 2 class dates available to sign up for in October. The classes run from 10.30 – 3pm and have a maximum of 10 students + 1 assistant position. At this point no further classes are scheduled, however I hope to do more over summer.

If you’re a textile / arts / design student over 18, you can apply to be the assistant by emailing me on vic @ bindandfold.com

See you in class!

Derived from the leaves of the Indigo plant, there are a few different varieties. I use a certified organic Indian Indigo, Indigofera Tinctoria. The Japanese strain of Indigo has the botanical name of Polygonum Tinctorium, and is also known as Dyers Knotweed.  Australia also has it’s own indigenous Indigo, known as Indigofera Australis. It is a rather gorgeous shrub, and has delicate purple flowers in the springtime. For the gardeners out there, it likes a well drained position in half shade.

Working with Indigo requires patience, and persistence. When you dye with Indigo, you are required to re-dip your piece to build up the colour, and leave it to oxidise fully between dips. Repeated dipping also improves it’s wash and light fastness.  All of my work receives at a minimum 3 dips in the Indigo vat. The darker shades are built up over many more dips, and a piece I worked on recently had around 15 dips to reach the desired shade. That patience I mentioned earlier was starting to wear a touch thin by the end of that piece!

Indigo, while tricky to work with, is a great natural dye to begin your journey with. It is a lovely colour, it is challenging, and working with it is extremely satisfying.  If you’d like to learn more about working with Indigo, I do teach one day workshops, which will be starting up again in the springtime. If you’d like to come along and dip your proverbial toe in the vat (not your real toe, it WILL turn blue) then you can drop me a line via my contact page to be notified when classes are available for booking.

Here’s a little taste of the Indigo process, enjoy!

In addition to being stocked at such a lovely shop, we also got to be part of an editorial in Belle Magazine all about Indigo! The magazine is out next Monday the 4th of November, but in the mean time, here’s a sneak peek at our work in the mag. (Top right corner)

This is my first magazine appearance, so I’m pretty excited about it! Hopefully the first of many!

I’ll have some Shibori on the street for the 2 weeks of the festival, some Indigo works on canvas as part of the “Small Works Small Spaces” exhibit. My work is entitled “Phases”, and is still a work in progress, I’ve got a bit to finish off before the end of the week.

I’ve been contemplating the notion of shibori street art for a little while now, so being able to take part in this festival is pretty cool. The idea came to me when i was thinking about yarn bombing, and how that has become such an accepted practice in Melbourne, and particularly in Moreland which is where I live.  I love the idea of turning textiles into street art, something that can be either left for all to enjoy or be squirrelled away for use in a project. (Before you think of squirrelling these ones, they’re on heavy painters canvas, so they aren’t going to sew nicely into a quilt for example!)

Now I just have to test pasting this heavy canvas onto a wall! Otherwise I will have to find a different way to install them, and probably a different location on the street too.

Northern Exposure runs for 2 weeks, opening this Friday 12th July 2013 @6pm on High Street in Northcote. You can find more info on the High St Northcote facebook page.

I’ve been working on some new stuff for the market, which I will hopefully have ready in time! If you’re in Melbourne, please come down and say hi! It will be my first market ever, so some friendly faces will put me at ease :)

One of my new scarves. You can find this one up for sale here.
I’ve been working a lot with the Indigo lately, so expect more blue from me! More indigo news in my next blog post.