hi i'm ashley and welcome to crafting the future a sustainable fashion design workshop series in
celebration of the new tomix timbaland collection this collection was designed
with sustainable practices in mind from sourcing fabrics ethically to upcycling scrap fabric that
otherwise would have gone to waste so in that spirit in this series i'm going to be visiting
two amazing sustainable designer studios getting a behind-the-scenes look at their
design process and making some diy clothing using techniques that you guys can use at home as well
so today we're going to be learning all about natural dyes with cara marie piazza
i'm excited to see what we make today let's go meet her
hey i'm carmery piazza and welcome to my natural dye studio
so today's workshop is really accessible it's a really easy way to get into the world of natural
dyes hey come on in how's it going it's good how are you it's nice to meet you i think the fact
that you can create color from natural materials is really exciting sometimes people get a little
bit afraid because they don't know if you know it's going to come out right but i really want to
make sure that everyone at home understands that when you do this this is your creative play time
so tell me a little bit about yourself and how you originally got started working with natural dots
i've actually been doing this for about 10 years now and i found the medium in college
i really wanted to work in the fashion industry in a sustainable way and i've like dedicated my path
to this ever since were you like in a class in college do you find it online yeah yeah so we're
just playing with some onion skins yeah it was painful a woman actually came in and she taught us
a workshop and i needed to figure out what i was going to do for my thesis and natural dyes weren't
actually a pathway that my college really thought was you know appropriate because you weren't gonna
make money essentially doing it but i just became so hyper obsessed with it and i also love the fact
that onion skins are something we typically throw away could you walk me through what we're gonna
be doing today yes so step number one we morton or prepare our fiber to be able to take the dye
step number two we're gonna soak our bulldog clips so that they create a rusty color which
changes the color of the dye step number three the fun part we get to fold the shirt all up and cool
step number four we're gonna cook all of our onion skins into the dye step number five the
dyeing happens step number six we take the shirt out of the dye unwrap the big magic
to do this you're going to need your stainless steel pot your garment your t-shirt strainer
lemons your onion skins aluminum sulfate string larger spoons distilled white vinegar clothespins
rubber bands rusted bulldog clips dried flowers if you want to have some
fun gloves tongs scissors a whisk measuring spoons a thermometer okay sounds like a plan
let's get into it shall we so step number one is more damping your fabric so what that means
is we are basically creating a chemical layer on the fabric to be able to take the dye it's
not as scary as it sounds it's honestly really simple it's basically like putting on makeup
primer before your foundation or something just to help everything stick on there exactly okay just
like that you figure out the amount of morton that you need by weighing your shirt and using about 15
the weight of your shirt in the morning i am going to have you grab our aluminum sulfate
here and you're gonna add it into our pot great so where would you buy aluminum sulfate
so it's really easily available online also if you don't want to purchase the aluminum sulfate
and you're someone who collects a lot of avocado bits you can use about 30 avocado pits as well
so once you're ready you're going to take your shirts so we'll just slowly
put it in and we're going to want to leave it here on the heat at around 140 degrees fahrenheit for
at least an hour you can also leave it overnight but an hour should be fine if it's on the heat
and what is the craziest thing that you've ever made a die out of
to me it's not weird anymore but i think one of the crazier natural dyes are actually the
kosher nail beetle so it's a little bug that makes like a really beautiful hot pink okay
is there any way though that i could make a die out of the cockroaches that are in my apartment
i've never tried it but you can report back okay so now that the hour's done we're ready
to take our shirt out make sure your water is not hot so i'm just gonna grab it like this
and we'll just wring it out it's totally cool to work on your shirt wet
we are going to lie it out flat natural dyes are affected by a variety of different variables so by
working with metals like rusted metal you can actually change the color of your natural day
so these i've already rested but to show everyone at home if you just grab some binder clips that
you can get you know from any office store and you grab some distilled vinegar and you just
pour it in and you don't have to fully cover them that should be enough so the air is actually what
allows it to oxidize so it's important to not fully submerge them our next step is folding the
shirt and we're going to start with one corner and bring it to the other end bring the edges
up one more time so this is kind of the same concept of like when you're tie dyeing in like
middle school summer camp right yeah you want to create all those nice little folds and crevices
exactly this is up to you you can do this however you like but you can add clips here so you can do
one on each side i'm gonna let you do your magic at this point okay so now it's the fun part we're
gonna create the dye with the onion skins so i'm just gonna grab our pot we're gonna grab the skins
just throw them in there yep go for it it's kind of therapeutic it does it feels good right
and what color will these onions create so these are gonna make kind of like a rusty brown gold
color and then like around the cliffs is going to go a bit more like green yellow
now you're going to stir them so you want to get them all wet so i'll just stop there
i feel like there's a little witchcraft exactly what witchy
you're gonna throw your shirt right into the pot with onion skins in it and you never really want
to boil your garment in natural dice either so it's always important to kind of keep it at a
simmer otherwise it like ruins the integrity of your clothes we're gonna leave this for at least
two hours and then when we come back we're gonna have a beautifully naturally dyed shirt all right
you ready to see our creation oh yeah amazing so just make sure the water is not too hot i'm going
to just bring out a majority of the excess water and then you can help me do the rest
alright and now you can do the unveiling very cool it's such a vibrant yellow yeah totally
and all these little white patches are where the binder clips yeah so everywhere that we bounce
with the clips is where we make a white patch shall we look at the back yeah let's do it oh okay
and here you're seeing some of the color change that you said would come with the rest exactly
so everywhere you see the clip and you see some of the darker spots that's where the rusty clips were
once you're done with your uh garment like the one we dyed today you want it to dry
naturally overnight and then iron it in the hottest setting that helps set the dye
and so how do you take care of naturally dyed garments can you just put them in the machine
wash or will everything you own suddenly the onion colored that's a great question
so after you've naturally dyed something you do want to wash it separately but then once
it's been washed the first time you can wash it with all of your other clothing
i think today went great i think ashley did an amazing job i thought we had a lot of fun we
got some really fun funky different results and i think today was an all-around success
i was honestly impressed like how simple it is did the primer we boiled some onions we let it
soak and that's it totally something that i can easily do at home i think every shirt comes out
unique and completely different so i'm always really excited to see what the unwrapping is for
all of our viewers at home i think one of the most important things with natural dyes is that time is
an ingredient so if you can leave your garments to soak in the dye for longer the better it's
gonna be i promise you if you can like hold the surprise for the day after i promise you're gonna
get amazing results so thank you so much for coming to take my class and thank you so much
tommy for supporting my craft can't wait to see all your beautiful creations at home so please
remember to tag us thank you guys so much for watching if you'd like to try this at home we left
all the materials and instructions that you'll need in the description down below and don't
forget to check out the new tommy x timbaland collection and the other workshop in this series