On the fourth day of Folk Art and Living Simply IL students continued to craft with new mediums, to repurpose recycled materials, and to use a range of materials and methods to make tea light luminaries. By the end of the day, we had completed three separate projects.
We kicked off the day by learning how to create luminaries with tissue paper, Mod-Podge, and even flower petals and leaves. We had the opportunity to create two each, some experimented with arranging a mixture of flower petals and leaves and creating something to let more light through, whereas some layered different colors of tissue paper to create a project with depth and diversity.
Our second project of the day focused on fabric dying with natural fibers and dyes. After a break, we came back and started to prepare cloth for dye. We each got two cloth squares to fold in whichever way we desired; some of us tried Shibori methods that ranged from rectangular, triangular, and even circular patterns. Others used various knots and spiral patterns. To dye the fabric we used naturally-sourced dyes such as indigo (blue), hibiscus tea (red), and madder root (pink) for our dye baths.
We learned how quickly these natural dyes saturated the cloth and watched how the pigment and distribution of color changed depending on the time it spent in the dye and the way it was folded. After fishing our cloth bundles out of the dye baths, the moment of truth came when we opened up or individual creations. We had an amazing range of folds and colors and everyone’s projects came out super colorful and interesting!
After lunch, we prepped cloth for paper making to use on our final day of Folk Art and cleaned up our spaces for the next project. This project was a return to basket-making using a different technique and materials. We repurposed old magazines and newspapers to create long strands to eventually weave into a basket. A few days prior we made the bases and spools of our basket to make today easier. Once we finished creating our newspaper “string” we got to work on weaving our baskets. Our final products ranged from short to tall, wide to slim, and even in color from the different magazines. These baskets are a perfect example of repurposing items that would otherwise be thrown away and turning them into lasting art. Our fourth day of IL was a huge success, with lots of projects to bring home and lots to look forward to for our final day.
