penguin alley creations: Indigo fun at Folk School!

INDIGO DYEING WITH GASALI ADEYEMO Oct. 20-25, 2013

Mart, me, Gasali, Judy, Mom

Just back from another wonderful week at John C. Campbell Folkschool. I went with two State College friends, Mart and Judy and my Mom from Cleveland. It was a wonderful week. Gisali is a native Nigerian from the Yaruban tribe. The Yarubans are known for their indigo fabric.

Indigo grows wild in Nigeria. They harvest the leaves

Indigo ball from Nigeria

and pound them into tiny bits in a wooden container with big wooden poles. When it is chopped into pieces, it is mixed with wood ash. Handfuls are scooped out and pressed into balls and dried. These are used to start a dye pot.

Before our class started Sunday evening, Gisali took about 95 of these balls and placed them in a big pot with water. They needed to sit for three or four days as they ferment. As he put them in the pot, he called to the "Lady of the Indigo" saying her name three times and praying the into would work.

Sunday evening we met for a little while. Besides our four, there were 8 other students and our able assistant, Charlotte. Gisali welcomed us and told us a little about the history of indigo. Since just dyeing fabric blue would be a boring week, we would be learning how to put designs on our fabric. These are called resists as where the design will be resists the dye. There were four types of resist we would be learning:
Adire eleko is a paste resist.
If someone just says Adire, this is the
technique they are referring to.
Adire oniko is a tied resist
Adire alabere is a stitched resist
Adire alabela which is a wax resist, the Yaruban version of batik
Gisali himself is a wonderful teacher - very gentle and soft-spoken, caring greatly that his students enjoy the process. He laughs a lot and answers questions carefully.

After our introduction, we were dismissed and could go to our cottages and collapse in bed. It had taken two days of driving to get here. We were glad to sleep.

Monday, while the indigo continued to ferment, we learned Adire eleko. This flour paste is mixed from Cassava flour. Cassava is ground from the root of the plant and is either the same or very similar to tapioca flour - either way it is the root of a yucca plant. Cassava is a staple of the Nigerian diet. For dyeing, it is mixed in a saucepan with a little blue and white alum. It is mixed about 2 parts water to 1 part flour, and cooked over low heat, stirring constantly. After about 20 minutes, it began to thicken. The goal was to get it to the consistency of runny mashed potatoes. When it was scooped out of the pan, it would run slowly off the wooden spoon.

We had 22" squares of fabric which we divided into quarters. We were given a dollop of paste on a paper plate and a paper cup of water with a chicken feather and a broom straw. The chicken feathers curve in different directions, depending which side of the chicken they grow on, and it made a difference whether we were right or left-handed.

Most of the design is applied with chicken feathers. These are dragged through the paste. Then a dabbing motion is used as it is pulled along the fabric to create a design.

Once our designs were finished, the fabric was set aside to dry out of the sun. Applying the paste is a fairly slow process, so creating our fabric pretty much used up Monday.

My cassava piece before dyeing

Moms cassava piece pre-dyeing

Tuesday we moved on to batik, my favorite of the four techniques we learned. Yarubans use foam rubber cut to a point and shaped like a fat pencil to apply the wax. Paraffin (not beeswax) is melted, in our case, in an electric skillet, or frying pan over an electric burner. The foam rubber is dipped in, and then used to draw on the fabric. Faster movement results in thinner lines, slower in thicker. The wax temperature was a problem - our burner didn't control it well - too cold and it wouldn't work, too hot and it spread. That just added design elements, though.

Tuesday afternoon we took time out to watch a documentary about Yaruban indigo. (an exerpt can be found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kn_6zinf7cI), which showed the process from harvesting the leaves all the way to finished product.

We also learned some of the Adire oniko, the tied resist that day. The first technique was "pigeon eyes", where you pinched a bit of fabric and wrapped it tightly with raffia, which had been soaked to be pliable. "blades" were made by accordion pleating a bit of fabric, folding it and wrapping it. We used both techniques on one piece. We took these home in the evening and worked on them while watching the community contra/square dancers. Mart danced all the dances with a big smile on her face. Judy, Mom and I enjoyed watching.

Pigeon eyes and blades all tied up

Wednesday was the most exciting day as Gisali told us the indigo "was dancing". When it is ready, the leaves rise to the top and lots of bubbles form (and it smells its worst, although I didn't mind the smell). This meant we could dye!

The dyeing process is fascinating. When the fabric goes in, it immediately turns bright yellow-green. As it comes out, it oxidizes in the air, and turns a deep blue right in front of your eyes. Really fun! We died our batiks first. They didn't really care how long they stayed in the dye. After dyeing, the were drained into buckets so we could reuse the dye, then laid on the grass to begin drying, then eventually hung on the line.

The Cassava resists had to be treated more carefully, or the flour would come off and no design would be left. They were quickly dipped in and out, then laid out to dry. The were dipped multiple times to allow the dye to darken. When ready, three people would stretch the fabric taut and someone would use a knife or spatula to carefully scrape off the flour. The designs were subtle, somewhat disappointing, although we are told that once we set the dyes and rinse them at home the design will show more.

My Cassava piece

Mom's cassava piece

Once the batiks had been dyed, we put them in boiling water to soak the wax off, then immediate in cold water to remove wax flakes. Finally they were ironed on news paper to remove the last of the wax.

One of my batiks - I had to add penguins!

Mom's piece - the guy in the upper right is a little man made out of a pine cone and pipe cleaners that
Mom had bought and was in the house when we were growing up

We learned another wrapped technique in the morning, this time using waxed linen thread. This was called "Fila" or hat as when it was tied, it gathered the fabric up into a conical hap shape. When opened up, it was supposed to make a spiral of little circles. Most of us need to work on spacing to make that more obvious.

Gisali with a fila - this is 2 1/2 yards of fabric all tied up.
The pice behind him was waht it would look like untied.

In the afternoon, we learned a stitched resist where you folded the fabric a couple of times and then whip-stitched tightly across it. This makes lines. Often they are done in a horizontal, vertical and two diagonals at which point they call it "four way stop sign". I coupled mine with a little more batik.

We took our wrapping and stitching with us to watch some of the community dance groups practice Wed. night - clogging, Garland dancers and Morris dancers. Always one of my favorite things to watch.

Thursday we had learned the techniques and had time to finish wrapping, and stitching. Some, including me, also chose to do a little more batik. By the end of the day, everything was dyed and drying. If the stitch and tied things had already dried, we could undo the wrapping/stitches and see what we had. It was like opening Christmas gifts.

my fila opened up

pigeon eyes and blades

Thursday evening we watched documentary called "Blue Alchemy" about indigo use all over the world. It struck us how almost every culture treats the indigo dye bath as something living and worthy of reverence and respect. That was certainly true for the Yaruban people. It has brought so much to so many people.

Friday we only had half a day which was dedicated to removing more ties/stitches, cleaning up and enjoying each other. We had had time to get to know each other as we talked while applying our resists. Plus, we only had one community dye pot, which meant we worked together to create our pieces. As a result, by the week's end, it really felt like our classroom was a very special community, and each person was an important piece of it.

At 11, we took our pieces to the community room where there was an exhibit with each of the 14 classes showing off what they had done. Then lunch, and a sad farewell to Folk School. A very special week!

Student exhibit

Earlier in the week, a little kitten had been abandoned at Keith House. One of our classmates, Laura, decided to adopt her (her name is Possum). Before the closing ceremony, mom and I got to meet her. What a sweetie!