Carol Soderlund class: Color mixing for dyers - Mind blown!

I spent the past week in Baltimore, Ohio at the Crow Barn. Fabulous location, wonderful food, great people.

The Crow Barn

But the class, oh my! I have spent 2 years experimenting with color and trying to find a good system to get a handle on my results. Carol Soderlund's class on color mixing not only reinforced what I have already learned, but also went so much further. She has such a great system for testing color families, and cross referencing the results. We dyed and dyed and dyed again. Working in groups meant we made a huge color "Bible" in just 5 days. This extensive list of all our results, with one inch squares of fabric indexed as reference materials, means that future overdyes, color choices and gradients will all be simplified. I feel as though I was groping in the dark and someone turned the light on! Thanks, Carol! Now maybe I can stop testing and start creating!

More cushions and less testing in my future!

This was the first time I had dyed solids. I still love low water immersion, just for the freedom and the wonderful variety of color and texture it creates on the fabric, but I can see myself dyeing solids too now. I can see why people rave about Carol's classes. She is a great teacher, giving you confidence that if you follow her directions you will get where you need to go. There is lots to digest, but at least I have finished sticking down all my little pieces of fabric. If I never see double sided tape again, that will be just fine by me!

Day 1 stacks, waiting for more dyeing, ironing, chopping, distributing and sticking. I need a vacation from my vacation...

Here are some pics of all the lovely colors we made. Phew, I feel exhausted looking at all we achieved in such a short time!

Some of the great colors people dyed

Lots of different techniques

The light behind this one brings out the differing depths of color

This one looks like granite!

The shadows would make some fabulous starting points for further work on this cloth!

And just in case we got cocky, there was a Nancy Crow master class going on upstairs. So much beautiful work..