Shibori Indigo Dyeing at Kings County Distillery! Crafts, Cocktails, Textiles
Shibori Indigo Dyeing Outside with my Favorite Cocktail
On Wednesday I hosted our first Distill Creative Night! This is when we take our workshops on the road — this time to our favorite local distillery and bar, Kings County Distillery.
I originally started doing creative workshops as cocktails+craft back in 2015. My sister and I then started hosting small get togethers in our living room in Washington, DC. We’d make a cocktail together and a craft together. Eventually we started doing them in our favorites spaces in DC and the Smithsonian Folklife Festival. We then had a regular home at Colony Club, where Shenneth Dove-Morse, our DC Chapter Leader, still leads monthly workshops!
I stopped doing the cocktail portion in my workshops when I moved to NYC and I’m still building my bar back up (it takes time!), so I was super excited to have the opportunity to take my workshops outside and to a distillery!
I hadn’t hosted a workshop at a distillery ever before as most don’t have adequate event space nor space outside for things like dyeing. So I was super excited to host at Kings County Distillery this week! We set up the dye bath area towards the edge of the patio and were able to enjoy our drinks outside as the sunset.
Kings County Distillery makes great cocktails — and I especially love their classic Old Fashioned. I’m a whiskey fan, so it’s easy to find drinks I love here.
For the workshop, we reviewed a few basic shibori techniques, talked about indigo and shibori dyeing, and then started working on our own textiles.
Shibori refers to a variety of Japanese manual resist techniques. Indigo is a dye that naturally comes from a plant but is now more often synthetic.
Guests were able to bring their own textiles and everyone made gorgeous pieces!
It was really lovely to meet new people interested in natural dyeing. One student is even growing her own natural dye plant garden!
If you’re interested in shibori indigo dyeing, check out my new online shibori indigo dyeing course.
If you’re interested in natural dyeing, check out some of the books (*affiliate links*) below and join our email list to get an invite to our upcoming workshops.
Harvesting Color by Rebecca Burgess
The Modern Dyer by Kristine Vejar
Stitched Shibori: Technique, Innovation, Pattern, Design by Jane Callender