Fiber Arts as Book Arts: Natural Dyeing

Floral pattern dyed with food scraps
Iviva Olenick in a sunflower bundle-dyed silk handkerchief.
Iviva Olenick in a sunflower bundle-dyed silk handkerchief.

Event Info

Course Code: 25STX100V

This virtual workshop takes place on Zoom, on Thursday January 23rd, from 6pm to 8pm Eastern Time.

  • Thursday, January 23rd from 6-8pm

Please Note: Registration for this workshop closes on January 9th, at 11:59 pm. This workshop is the first of a four part series which covers embroidery, kitchen printing, and fiber book forms. 


About the Workshop:

This virtual workshop is taught by CBA instructor Iviva Olenick.

In this one-day, virtual workshop, participants will learn multiple dye and printing methods using kitchen and yard waste and responsibly foraged plant materials. You’ll learn more about natural materials and how to set up a safe fabric and paper dyeing area in your home. You will learn how to prep fabric for dyeing, including tips for mordanting and dyeing fabric, and gain an understanding of the differences between types of fibers and how they interact with dyes.

This workshop will also review how to responsibly harvest and forage for natural materials in your neighborhood, how to identify potential natural dye sources, and resources for learning more about your local plants. During class, you’ll complete a project using bundle dyeing and petal and leaf pounding, and discuss dip dyeing. Finally, students will gain inspiration from seeing examples of artists’ books made with dyed fabric and thread.

This class will set you up for the second class in this series, “Fiber Arts as Book Arts: Embroidery,” where you’ll learn embroidery techniques to add to your dyed surfaces. Through the full four-part series, you’ll transform fabric and paper using commonly found household items (food scraps, needle and thread, old fabrics and papers), telling new stories through combining fiber arts and book arts techniques. After experimenting with bundle dyeing and plant mono-printing in session 1, we’ll transition to basic embroidery stitches with a focus on rendering text in session 2, using plant-based materials to make inks, stamps and prints in session 3, and transforming plant-dyed and embroidered pages into sculptural books in session 4.


Required Materials:

  • Fabric and yarn with natural fibers
  • Large pot

More detailed materials lists will be provided in the email sent upon registration


About Iviva Olenick

Iviva Olenick is a Brooklyn-based artist developing textiles from seed to fiber and dye and using textiles as texts. Her work has been exhibited all over the United States, including the Philadelphia Museum of Art; Museum of Design Atlanta; the Hunterdon Museum, NJ; Sugar Hill Children’s Museum of Art & Storytelling, NYC; the Center for Book Arts, NYC; the Old Stone House, Brooklyn; Wyckoff House Museum, Brooklyn. Olenick is a faculty member of SVA’s MFA Art Practice program where she teaches Fibers. In addition, she gives artist talks and designs intensive textile-based workshops for museums and universities.


All images courtesy of the instructor.

In order to best serve our community near and far, many of our online classes are pay-what-you-can. The amount you choose to pay goes directly toward our instructors and toward creating scholarship opportunities for the future. This class will be recorded and the recording will be viewable for up to 30 days after the class.

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