Louie

Meeting of the Northwest Basket Weavers tonight, and the program is Michele Whipplinger of Earthues. She gave a great talk about natural dyes for basketry materials. Above is her display of raffia that she dyed with: yellow: Osage Orange wood. Blue: indigo. The greens were first dyed yellow, then dipped in the indigo pot to achieve various greens. Pink: madder root. Purple-red: lac. Red: cochineal.

She also brought several of her favorite baskets and fibers from her collection. Above, she shows an African mat woven of dyed raffia. The colors were pretty subtle, and very lovely. Below, one of her new pieces, and her current favorite. It is a shibori-dyed woven tube, apparently used as underclothing by African women.