Collaborating with God through Natural Dyeing
by Ellie Benedict
I’d like to invite you to join me in a contemplative practice about collaborating with God through the use of chance in a natural dyeing art project. In this video, I give a little bit of context for natural dyeing, instructions on how to explore this art form with household items, and I share a few personal insights I have had recently in my natural dyeing experiments as they relate to faith and God.
Natural dyeing is a fiber art form in which the artist uses natural dyeing material such as food scraps, items from the garden, or items from nature to change the color of fiber. Most natural dyers will use a “mordant” to help the color from the materials adhere to the fiber, but we’re going to skip that step since many mordants aren’t common household items. Here’s what you will need:
A clean glass jar that seals. Do not use one that you would ever like to use for food again. Since we will be leaving our jars outside for multiple days, it can invite the bacteria that causes food poisoning, so please be vigilant about handwashing throughout this process.
Your fiber material. Choose something that is 100% natural, such as cotton, wool, or silk. It can be fabric or yarn! As this is just an experiment, you only need a small swatch, but you can use as much as you would like, as long as it fits in your jar!
Fabric soap of some kind. To prepare our fiber for dyeing, we need to “scour” it to ensure that it is completely free of any impurities – even the chemicals used to prepare it before it hits the store will impede the color – so even if it's a brand new fabric, wash it really well. I use Synthrapol brand soap because it is strong and has a neutral pH. If your soap has a basic or acidic pH, it may affect your color result but that’s ok!
The dyeing material. I am using the skins from one yellow onion. You can use anything that you predict might create color! For me, this hypothesis is the first moment where science and faith come together in this art form. Like many things in life, all we can do is prepare for it, making our hypothesis about what we think will happen, and then put it together and see what comes out. It’s actually a lot like prayer! You might pray for how you want to feel, or how you want things to look in the future, but then you have to stay open-minded and see how God is going to bring that to you. It might not be in the way that you expect. I’m predicting that this onion skin will give my fabric a color, but I won’t know what color, shade, hue, or if it works at all, until God enters into the collaboration. As you choose your dye material, I recommend choosing something that has some tannins in it. The things that bring the strongest color might be different than what you’d expect. For example, most flowers and citrus do not give much color, but peels and seeds of things (like avocado stones and skin, onion skins, sumac, etc.) often produce rich color.
Now that we have all of our materials, we can place them into the jar. I’m going to tear my onion skins into smaller pieces so that there’s more surface area touching the fiber. And then I’ll take my fabric material and place it into the jar as well. I’m then going to pour water on top to fill the jar. I’m using hot water to start it off with a boost, but cold tap water is fine. Now that my jar is sealed, I’m going to find a sunny spot in the garden to put it and let the sun do some work on it for at least a couple of days. You could shake or turn the jar over once a day if you want, to help the dye affect all surfaces of the fiber.
A few days later, come back to the jar.
At this point, you have made your hypothesis and prepared the art, and then you did the really hard part—walk away and let something else affect it without your control.
Now it is time to see the results!
I’d like to invite you now to be open to being delighted by whatever you find. Sometimes there might be no color change at all, which is something you can add into your calculations for your future hypotheses. The color might be really subtle, which might be a beautiful result in and of itself, or it might be a really bright color and one that you didn't expect to come from the material you chose. Let’s go take a look!
I took my jar inside and immediately noticed that the water had become colored. I dumped it out and rinsed out the fiber inside. The color may also be different every time you do the experiment with the same dyeing material, based on factors you may not be able to predict or control, like the pH of the water used, the time it was under the sun, and how hot it got. Rinse out all material to ensure that no food or plant scraps are stuck in the fabric. Whatever the result, it is a visual demonstration of God’s participation in our art.
My ribbon came out to be a bright golden yellow color from the onion skin. I wish I could see what yours looks like!
I have realized that the process of natural dyeing is a little bit like how God works in my life. What I mean is, God makes things happen. But this doesn’t mean you should sit back and do nothing and wait for God to swoop down and tell you what to do—you still have to make the hypothesis and put the ingredients in the jar and do the hard step of walking away, inviting God in, inviting chance in. And then you trust that whatever comes out is the thing that's supposed to come out.
The other fun part about this natural art form is that it never stops changing: This project will probably fade. Time, sunlight, air, or being exposed to new pH levels could dramatically change the color over its lifetime. I’d like to invite you to delight in those changes as well. Natural art is alive! God’s presence in our lives is alive!
Enjoy.
Ellie Benedict is an energetic creative thinker committed to enacting social change through the arts. Ellie has a new MA in Arts Management, focusing on achieving equity in the arts through funding practices. Today she uses this fundraising knowledge in her day job on the development team of International Planned Parenthood Federation and stays connected to the arts in her weekend job at The Puppet Co. in Glen Echo, MD. An artistic explorer, she spends her time experimenting with clay and fiber arts. She is also a member of Seekers Church in Washington, DC, and has fun being surprised and delighted by God every day.
