Dyeing Silk ~

One of the classes we took at the Sewing Expo was dyeing with natural dyes. The teacher was Roberta from Fiber Etc and she is an amazing woman. She weaves, dyes, knits, spins and has an amazing fiber shop in Tacoma. Since there is no website for her store, here is the information:
Fibers Etc (253) 572-1859
705 Court C, #301, Tacoma, WA 98402

We took a class from her last year on knitting with unusual yarns, and she had samples of yarns out of metal, corn, soy, crab shells, milk, jade, paper and some other materials that were very creative and fun to experiment with. This year we learned to dye with natural extracts from bugs (cochineal), plants and trees. She gave us a skein of silk, a white silk scarf and a silk ribbon to practice with, and we had a blast! These pictures were taken after I "set" my colors in our microwave and now they are curing in the laundry room for a week or so before I can wash out the color. They look pretty yucky now, but I wanted a "before" picture for you.... (yuk, eh?)