Secondary CFE Final Day - Saturday Workshop #4!

 Today was the last day of our CFE experience, as well as the day of the 4th Saturday Workshop!

Fig 1: The workshop poster that Natalie did a great job making!

As we arrived at 8:45, we got set up for the time ahead of us. Natasha brought 3 huge bags full of bread from the Bread Affair, and Malihe helped with cutting it up. Us being future teachers, Danielle even made a shape of the day!

Fig 2: Workshop set up and the colourful shape of the day

Once everybody started arriving, we did some basic introductions (name + what colour they feel like today) before getting started with the dyeing. Danielle gave a quick explanation on how natural dyeing works, and then Natalie gave a quick tutorial on how to tie-dye. Everybody then got right into it, making very diverse and creative tie-dye designs as the pot of buttercups kept on boiling.

 

 

Fig 3: The natural dyeing process!

Since the dyeing itself needs to happen for an hour at least, we shifted to the next activity while everybody's piece of cloth was simmering away. Natasha led us through the rope-making process, while Bill introduced how to strip the blackberry bark. I even got to repeat my feat of jumping rope with the grass rope that my EDUC 450 colleagues Elsa and Meg had made back in September (see this link for that original blog post)!

  

 

 

 

 

 

Fig 4: Blackberry bark peeling, rope-making galore, and Jason jumping with natural rope!

While people were winding down with their rope-making, we were on the last leg of waiting for the tie-dye to fully simmer. Saul gave a tour of the garden for the first-timer participants while other people had to opportunity to socialize and truly enjoy the tranquil, relaxing environment of the garden.

Fig 5: Our amazing "Guardian of the Garden" Saul introducing the greenhouse.

Eventually, it became time to take out the fabric! The fun little point was that unless somebody used a creative tie-dye design, nobody would know who's was who's. Everybody went in and started unravelling the rubber bands to unveil some beautiful designs! They got to take some home, along with the huge amounts of bread, thus marking the end of the workshop.

 

  

 

 

Fig 6: The finished tie-dying products!

With everybody gone, Saul and the CFE students were able to have one last talking circle to reflect on the past 3 weeks we had spent together, as well as the workshop itself. A lot of us reflected on how amazing it was that all of the participants had thanked us while leaving for "preparing such an amazing workshop". We felt that the pace was great in that there was always something to do, but it was very laid back with opportunities for socializing and relaxing. I reflected that this might be the approach to outdoor education; making sure to provide just enough framework to facilitate, but to also let the natural environment guide the process, even if that means "being academically disengaged". There was definitely so much to take away from this workshop and the 3 weeks of our CFE, and I think I can confidently say that we are walking away with many new ideas and viewpoints on how to incorporate outdoor education into our future classrooms!

 

 

Fig 7: Our final goodbyes to the garden, with so much being taken with us and provided by us.

Fig 8: What was once an empty patch of grass became the site of our workshop, and now it is back to the way it originally was. Perhaps a symbol of land-based usage?

CFE Workshop Prep Friday May 29th

 This week we have been preparing for Saturday’s workshop. As the workshop will be based on how to dye clothes, we planned to get white cloth which we would cut into squares. We decided to do square pieces because it would be more budget friendly. Participants can’t just bring their own clothes, because the cloth has to be prepared in a very specific way in order for the dye to take properly. 

Therefore, on Tuesday I went thrifting for white clothes. We read online that natural dye does not work well on synthetic fibers so I specifically looked for something that is natural like cotton, wool, or linen. I eventually found two large white T-Shirts of 100% cotton. Before the fabric is dyed it must be prepared by washing it, then adding a mordent. It was my job to wash it. As it turns out, you cannot just wash the fabric like you would any other laundry. It must be scoured. This is a more intensive way of washing that aims to get a more thorough clean. Scouring involves boiling the fabric in soda ash and a pH balancing soap for about 1-3 hours. I will be honest, I am not sure what the soda ash and pH soap do for the process. I was very confused in my research, in fact, so confused that I did it wrong. I left out the soda ash.

So despite my efforts at boiling the t-shirts for a couple of hours, we had to re-scour them with the soda ash.

On Thursday we did our trial run for the workshop. We collected just over 500g of fresh buttercups for the dye, which took a surprisingly long time. We created tea bags with the flowers with cheese cloth and brewed the dye. 

Tomorrow is the workshop, so today I went to Granville Island to pick up a donation from The Bread Affair. The owner took out two giant bags of bread from the freezer and helped me put them in my trunk. They were really heavy!!

Honestly I am a bit nervous for the workshop. I hope everything goes smoothly. 

Workshop Prep in the Garden: Dye Bath

Today, the Secondary CFE team gathered at the garden to do some final preparations for the upcoming workshop. The primary focus was to gather our natural materials (a.k.a. buttercups), create the full batch of the dye bath ahead of time, and to conduct some tests for the pretreated fabric that we sourced. 

Starting off with gathering materials for our dye bath process, we needed to figure out a target weight for the amount of natural materials that would be used. In natural dyeing, this is done by first calculating the weight of the fiber/fabric that is being dyed, commonly known as the WOF. The weight of the dye materials is then calculated based on the % of the WOF.

For example, a flower dye with 150% WOF means we would need 1.5 times the weight of the fibre/fabric in flowers.

In researching online examples of natural dyeing with buttercups, we found a large range of "recipes" from 150% to 800% WOF, where higher concentrations of buttercups will yield deeper shades of the color. We set our initial goal somewhere in the middle at about 400% WOF, which with our WOF at about 284g, meant we needed to gather a total of 1.1kg in buttercups. 

From there, we had our rather ambitious goal and everyone went off with buckets in hand to pick as many buttercups as we could. We tried to avoid as much stems as possible to minimize the chances of the dye leaning towards a more green-ish tint. While I started my picking journey with scissors and trying to cut precisely, I ended up grabbing a stool and picking each one by hand instead, which really maximized the productivity. Of course, remember to wash your hands thoroughly when handling buttercups, as they contain toxins that can irritate your skin and stomach.

In the end, we decided to pivot from 400% WOF to about 200% WOF (~500-600g), crossing our fingers that it would still give us a decent result! Looking back at our output of buttercups, it was honestly pretty impressive! 

Once we had our fresh buttercups picked, we started to make our "dye teabags" with cheesecloth and some twine.  These will be simmered in the water for at least an hour to slowly extract its color, and the cheesecloth allows for a clean disposal of the natural materials after dyeing. To make the extraction better, we more finely chopped up the buttercups in the buckets, where you can even see the color starting to come out.

One potential idea we originally had was to also create paint from dried buttercups. While we ultimately decided on a different activity, we figured we could also grind up some of the dried buttercups with a mortar and pestle and add them to the dye bath for an extra boost of color. Check out the yellow staining on that pestle - gorgeous! Of course, make sure you do not use the mortar and pestle for food purposes after grinding the buttercups.

After we got our camp stove setup and water boiling, we added our "dye teabags" to our pot, and simmered for about an hour, lightly stirring occasionally. It's amazing to see the color change during the process and the deepening of the yellow, which can be monitored based on the color of the cheesecloth. 

After an hour of simmering the dye, we added in our test samples of our pretreated (mordanted) fabrics, and allowed it to simmer for another hour. We decided to experiment with some tie-dye effects as well, using some spare rubber bands to see if we could get some rad patterns (spoiler: seems like it totally works!). Once the fabrics has been simmering for about an hour, we rinsed it in some clean, cool water and left it out to hang dry in the sun. We expect it will probably change in color even as it dries, so we're curious to check back on it in the next few days!

While we were waiting during all the simmering, we decided to de-thorn and peel some blackberry stems, in hope of once again trying out the pentagonal basket weaving activity from our fiber arts day. Our hope was that if the fresh stem would be more malleable than twigs when weaving, but would still yield a durable basket structure as it dries. While it did end up being more malleable than the previous twigs we used, the holes of the base proved to be an persistent issue. We ended up "hand drilling" the holes to widen them a bit, and by that I mean literally twisting holes by hand with drill bits (in absence of an electric drill). This actually worked, but in the end our stems were just a touch short to finish off the basket! Regardless, we left it out to dry in the sun overnight and we're excited to see if this could be viable with longer stems!

Overall, we're feeling optimistic about the workshop, having fully prepped the dye bath and testing out some samples. While the final color was a surprise to us all, it shows that there can be a lot of experimentation and unpredictability in the natural dyeing process. Going through the labor of picking all those buttercups as well, we felt a great sense of pride just knowing that it actually worked, and it really makes you appreciate the level of involvement required in this process.

Preparing to Make the Dye Bath

 

In order to dye our cloth this Saturday we will need a dye bath to soak our cloth in.  In fact, we will need to heat up the dye bath and soak the cloth in it for about an hour.   This means we Teacher Candidates will have to make the dye bath prior to the workshop on Saturday. 

We originally wanted the participants to make the dye on at the workshop.  The dye is actually quite easy to make.  First, you pick a lot of butter cups – which would be easy since there are like a million of them in the orchard garden – then you cook the flowers in water. Voila! You have a yellow dye bath.  The problem is, you must cook the buttercups in water for up to 90 minutes.  After discussing, we realized that if we attempted to make the dye on Saturday, we would runout of time to dye the cloth.   We decided that for Saturday’s workshop we will still show our participants how to make the dye, but we will have a batch of premade dye so that we can skip the 90-minute wait. 

Tomorrow we will make the premade dye bath at the orchard.  Today I picked up some propane for a Coleman stove that we can use on site at the garden.  I also grabbed a butane stove and butane cartridges as a back up.   The team of teacher candidates are meeting tomorrow for our first attempt at making dye from butter cups and water.    

CFE Day 11: A trip to Maiwa

 Today was spent preparing for the Saturday workshop, specifically gathering materials for naturally dyeing with buttercups! Something that I have learned while researching natural dyeing is that you have to prepare your fabric in a special way. 

We sourced two 100% cotton t shirts from the thrift store to dye. Because our fabric is cellulose fabric (meaning made out of plant materials) we have to do three processes to prepare it to be dyed. First we have to scour the fabric. Scouring means to clean it very well using special sop and soda ash, to eliminate any oils on the fabric. After the fabric has been scoured, it must be given a tannin wash (yes just like the tannins you find in tea!), and then it must be given a mordant wash. The tannin and the mordants are so the dye will adhere to the fabric.

Today I went to Maiwa on Granville island, a store specializing in natural dye. I picked up Alum, which will be used as our mordant, and Gallnut extract, which will be used as our tannin. I chose the Gallnut extract over the regular Gallnut, because the regular Gallnut leaves a slightly brown colour on the fabric after you do the wash. Because we are expecting buttercups to dye the fabric yellow, it was important to look for a tannin that would be clear, and not leave any colour cast on the fabric. This will give the best yellow results. 

The folks at Maiwa were very helpful in picking out a mordant and tannin and answering my questions! They did not, however, have any experience dyeing with buttercups. This will really be an experiment to see if it can be done! 

Workshop Preparation

It is an exciting week in the garden! Myself and the rest of the CFE team are preparing for the upcoming workshop this Saturday May 30th in the garden! It will be a fantastic day of natural dyeing using buttercups and rope-making using natural fibres. There is no shortage of buttercups in the garden so it will be lovely to utilize them.

For my part in the workshop, I want to bring beads to go beyond rope making and into bracelet making! I thought this may be a fun addition to rope making for kids and those that are jewelry-wearers! I also want to make sure that I am up to speed on the steps involved in natural dyeing. Danielle is our expert in that area and I want to make sure I'm in a good position to support her on the day. In addition to that knowledge, I ordered some cheese cloth to place the buttercups into before they go into the pot of water. 

We all have our respective jobs and I am sincerely looking forward to the workshop this Saturday! I hope to have a good turnout on the day. At the very least, I know my Mom is coming to support me and take part in the workshop. 

Saturday looks like a mix of sun and rain so fingers crossed that the weather cooperates for us! If that fails, we do have a contingency plan just in case we get rained out. 

If you're reading this, I hope to see you this Saturday!

CFE Day 9: Art in the Garden Curricula Activities, Workshop Planning

 With Susan no longer with us as she prepares for her VIA train trip across Canada as the in-"train(?)" musician, Saul was with us to go through the latter half of Dr. Dustin Garnet's list of possible "Art in the garden curricula activities". 

The first activity involved creating a "map" of the garden, but by invoking not just the sense of sight, but smell, hearing, as well as feelings and memories. This made the experience very personal and variable for interpretation. Indeed, the resultant maps everyone drew were quite different, even though we were all describing the same space! Some people relied heavily on the emotions and experiences they felt at various points, some people focused on the sensory experience, and many people did a huge mixture of all ideas. One major curricular connection we made with this activity was the social-emotional aspect of self-reflection and sharing, and we all identified our own ways to implement it in our own specialized teachables.

Fig 1: A collage of everyone's maps! (Being completely honest, writing this a day late, I don't remember who's was who, only that mine is the bottom-most one...)

The second activity was to create a collage of colours found in the garden. Everybody was assigned a colour that they had to try and find somewhere in the garden, then sort their materials in some way that made sense to them. The colours assigned were red, blue, yellow, white, black, pink. Everybody did a great job finding objects with their assigned colour, except for myself who had a huge struggle trying to find naturally black objects. This was a great learning moment as I realized how much black there was in animals, insects, and synthetic materials, but almost non-existent in plant-based nature. As a collective group, we saw that most of the colours we found were not ever in one single hue, but in a continuum of colours in one big spectrum.

Fig 2: Collage of our collages

Then, we bid farewell to Saul and thanked him for such an incredible experience as our teacher of the garden! It wasn't a hard goodbye as we would still see him on Thursday for our test run day and the workshop itself, but with the work parties officially over, it was quite the moment of realization that our CFE time was coming quickly to an end.

Lastly, we spent some time planning for the general itinerary of our upcoming Saturday workshop! With materials and tasks distributed, and a proper game plan, we called it a day at 1:30 and headed into the weekend!

Fig 3: Tentative outline and to-do list!