natural dye no. 1: Queen Anne’s Lace

I am so, so grateful to have easy access to beautiful outdoor space during this time of self-distancing and sheltering in place. I haven’t taken that availability for granted and it’s resulted in (and continues to result in) some explorations with my immediate environment.

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I’ve been wanting to gather some Queen Anne’s lace for dyeing for quite some time, ever since my friend Nadene dyed some linen with it several years ago. Nadene is such an incredible dyer and I’ve never forgotten the way that linen practically vibrated with that yellow color. An almost neon, but not remotely garish; pastel, but not even approaching dowdy.  

Everybody in Alabama know what Queen Anne’s lace is, even if they don’t know what it’s called. It’s one of the most prevalent roadside and ditch side plants around these parts. My friend Lindsay even told me the seeds are a really effective birth control if timed properly. 

However, Queen Anne’s Lace turned out to be the kind of thing you can always find until you go out hunting it. I believe we’re a bit on the early side of the season, but after driving around for half an hour or so, me and Tim found an unmowed stretch of Highway 54 that was covered up in beautiful Queen Anne’s Lace blooms. We pulled over (or, more accurately, just stopped in the middle of the road), and went to cutting.

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It’s important to mention that QAL looks very similar to several very dangerous plants, specifically hemlock and hogweed, potentially known by other names in your area. For me, it’s helpful to remember to look for a hairy, completely green stem to identify it as Queen Anne’s Lace. If that’s the case, I’m good to go with cutting it for dyeing or arranging. Always use your best judgment when foraging, and use local resources for plant identification. I’m lucky to have people in my life that I can text (thanks, Mom!) for help identifying plants, but seek out local or regional Plant Identification groups on Facebook—it’s immensely helpful and fascinating to be able to identify plants with regional monikers, and to find out any hyperlocal uses of the plant. I love talking with someone about similar plants, only to find out we’re actually discussing the same plant—my grandmother just happened to call it Oleaster and yours called it Eleagna.

Anyway, back to the Queen.

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I mordanted all of my fibers with alum at 15% weight of fiber. I use cellulose fibers, and mordanted some vintage linen handkerchiefs, along with some cotton and linen. I also matched my WOF 100% with my weight of dyestuff. I’m the first to admit I’m a bit wonky (let’s call it “intuitive”) when it comes to measuring my dyestuff. I measured a flowerhead that looked fairly average to me, and then counted how many flower heads I had, and multiplied those numbers together. Hey, it works for me!

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The next morning, I uncovered the pot and the liquid was more developed, and after reheating for a bit, had really developed into a pure, sunshine-golden yellow. I added my mordanted fibers and simmered for a few more hours, before removing it and putting it back in a corner of my outdoor studio to sit, stirring occasionally throughout the day.

On the morning of Day 3, I took everything out of the dye pot and played with some pH modifiers to push for some more gray, sage tones.  The linens have been laundered now, and I’m so pleased with the result. I found it incredibly hard to photograph these colors without them going too pale or too gray, and I really strived for these being as color-correct as possible. The color is really kinetic. The brighter tones are warm and vibrant, and while it isn’t the richest color, the dimensionality is really nice. The darker, pH modified dye color is a gorgeous tone that has taupe and sage tones, and I think I’ll likely get more use out of that shade over time, specifically with dyeing some cotton, wool and linen threads for hand-stitching

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Thanks for following along! It’s nice to know I’ve got an option for a nice, soft yellow and pretty sage this time of year. I’ll let you know what we forage next, while we wait for all of our dyeplants to bloom in the garden. I’m thinking it might be some spikey Sweet Gum balls.

inspiration #2: Yvonne Wells

“I taught myself and have had no formal training in quiltmaking. I consider myself a quilt artist and take pride in making big, bold, primitive and unusual quilts.”

Yvonne Wells, 'Me, Masked II,'  dated 1993, 60 x 61 in.

Yvonne Wells, 'Me, Masked II,'  dated 1993, 60 x 61 in.

I first encountered Yvonne Wells's quilts when I worked at the Kentuck Museum Association in Northport, AL. Yvonne is a longtime fixture on the cultural landscape of the region, and has exhibited at the Kentuck Festival for almost thirty years, winning a huge number of awards from the changing judges of the festival.

For most of her adult life, Yvonne Wells taught physical education in public schools, although she also had a stint as a paramedic. It was not until 1979 while her home was undergoing extensive renovations that she turned to quilting. It was initially a purely utilitarian venture--the heat in her home was being restored, and she needed a practical way to keep warm, so her first quilt was made simply to warm her legs. Yvonne used the knowledge she had from watching her mother make utilitarian quilts, the kind of quilts Yvonne describes as " the kind that were made in the morning and used that night" (I love that description).

It was that first utilitarian, patchwork quilt that led Yvonne to realize the potential textile work had for narrative, spiritual and political expression. Wells states, "what my head sees, my heart feels, my hand creates.” Wells self-taught approach to her work, combined with her singular vision, results in some of the most compelling textile work I have ever encountered in person. Respect for Yvonne's work has grown far outside of just the West Alabama region, including an exhibition at the International Quilt Study Center and Museum at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and a line of Hallmark cards featuring her designs.

The reason Yvonne's work resonates so strongly with me is the untapped access to her mind, unfettered by self-consciousness or outside influence. This really gets at the heart of the reason why I admire folk and outsider art in general, but Yvonne has little concern for traditional notions of perfection (which is a crippling, widespread issue with quilters) and what many think of as traditional quilting techniques. Her visceral work gives her ideas agency, and offers much to be admired and learned from. See below for more examples of Yvonne's incredible work.

 

 

Inspiration #1 - Ruth Clement Bond

 

How Ruth Clement Bond inspired African American women to create their own spaces and expanded the capabilities of quilts

 
 

Something that I have become increasingly interested in focusing on throughout 2018 is investigating the origins of quilts and their transition from utilitarian objects into objects of political and ideological expression. I think it gets fairly easy for us to take for granted craft's ability to act in this way, as the union of craft and commentary is so prevalent these days, and often so well-received. However, this was not often the case. My interest lies in tracking this transition, which I plan on investigating through an individual lens each month. I think that in order to create vital work, we need to understand the first steps individuals took to enable artists and craftspeople to be taken seriously and to create work at all. My first stop on this investigation is Ruth Clement Bond.

A pretty invaluable discovery for me this past year was The Quilt Index. If you are not familiar, The Quilt Index is a joint project of the Alliance for American Quilts, Michigan State University, and the Michigan State University Museum, that catalogues quilts with images, information about the quilter, the materials of the quilt, where the quilt is housed, the type of quilt block used, etc. The Quilt Index currently has around 90,000 entries, and is searchable through a variety of parameters, my favorite being by State.

Lazy Man, designed by Ruth Clement Bond, stitched by Rose Marie Thomas, 1934. From Michigan State University Museum, Michigan State University Museum Collection. Published in The Quilt Index, http://www.quiltindex.org/basicdisplay.php?kid=1E-3D-260A. Accessed: 01/2/2018

While looking through quilts made by Alabamians, I was struck by a graphic applique quilt, depicting a black figure holding a guitar. The bold, simplified shapes and bright colors reminded me of the paper cuts Henri Matisse made late in life.

Through my research, I would find out that this was part of a series of quilts called the TVA Quilts, designed by Ruth Clement Bond and stitched by women in Lauderdale County, AL. The quilt is meant to depict an African American man, attempting to decide between a life of indulgence and leisure, depicted on the right by the guitar and sensual, slightly abstracted profile of a woman's body, and a life of stable, government income, depicted by the white extended hand on the left. I had no idea of the importance of Ruth Clement Bond's impact or influence until I began to delve more into her history, her legacy and her process.

Ruth Clement Bond was an African American Quilter and Civic Leader, born in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1904. She was the fourth of seven children born to George, a prominent bishop in the Louisville community, and Emma Williams, who became the first African American woman to be named American Mother of the Year. In an interview conducted as part of the Foreign Affairs Oral History Program, Ruth described the 20 room mansion she grew up in in Louisville, that was always full of visitors, as there was nowhere else for people of color to stay in the town. Bond attributes most of her success as a person to the values instilled in her by her dynamic parents, and their ability to communicate with anyone in the community.

Ruth Clement Bond went on to receive her BA and MA in English from Northwestern University, and was head of the English department at Kentucky State College. She married J. Max Bond in 1931, and moved to Los Angeles with him so that he could earn his doctorate in Sociology from USC. Ruth began her studies for her Ph.d, but after being unable to find suitable conditions for childcare, she withdrew from school to focus on her family.

 

In 1934, she relocated from Los Angeles to a segregated community in Lauderdale County, AL, with her husband, who was assigned to oversee African American men working to construct the Wheeler Dam, a New Deal initiative established in 1933. Ruth planned to resume her studies, but was unable to find a suitable university, and instead focused her efforts on community involvement. Many of the workers in the community had been sharecroppers, and many of the families were receiving their first steady supply of income. Ruth set out to show the women of the community what opportunities existed, and how to increase their quality of daily life through what she referred to as a home beautification project. As Ruth said, "they were buying pianos with cash, and they couldn't get them into their cottages! These country women were buying things they didn’t need, yet weren’t fixing up their houses."

The home beautification project began with Ruth receiving donated flour sacks and grain bags from the local cook, and teaching the women to dye and make curtains from them. She went on to teach weaving and rug making, and eventually settled on quilting. Ruth was not a quilter, but she designed the quilts by cutting shapes out of brown paper, choosing fabric colors, and then meeting with the women of the community to plan the quilts. Many of the women in the community were expert quilters, taught by family members, many of whom were enslaved people. The first quilt that was designed and made for what would become the TVA Quilt Series was the Black Power Quilt. The quilt depicts a raised black fist holding a lightning bolt, representing the power and value of the lives and efforts of black people to improve their own quality of life, and the lives of those in the surrounding region, through their work. Bond says the quilt represents "pushing up through the obstacles—through objections. We were coming up out of the depression, and we were going to live a better life through our efforts. The opposition wasn’t going to stop us.”

Wheeler Dam Construction with Bucket, Lauderdale County, AL 1935, courtesy of the Tennessee Valley Authority Historic Collection.

Wheeler Dam Construction with Bucket, Lauderdale County, AL 1935, courtesy of the Tennessee Valley Authority Historic Collection.

Black Power, designed by Ruth Clement Bond, stitched by Rosa Marie Thomas, 1934. Museum of Arts and Design, gift of Mrs. Rosa Philips Thomas in 1994

Black Power, designed by Ruth Clement Bond, stitched by Rosa Marie Thomas, 1934. Museum of Arts and Design, gift of Mrs. Rosa Philips Thomas in 1994

Ruth and the women meant the title "Black Power" as a pun -- a Black workforce was bringing electricity to rural America, and black labor was being truly valued for one of the first times in these individual's lives. When interns came from Fisk and Tennessee State to work under Max Bond, they took the phrase Black Power and interpreted the term more broadly, but the original definition that Ruth and the quilters envisioned seems intrinsically tied to the more widely accepted definition of Black Power in the 1960s. When asked if she and her community of women quilters originated the term Black Power, Ruth is coy and simply says, "Some people say so."

Ruth and her community went on to make eight designs total, with four of each design being made by different women. She viewed this home beautification effort as much more than surface level aesthetic improvements--Ruth intended to help these women take agency in constructing their surroundings. The quilts helped shift the role of craft and quilt-making into being viable avenues for political and personal expression, and laying a foundation for artists like Faith Ringgold and Judy Chicago to take the domestic into the sphere of activism.

While Ruth never quilted again after leaving Alabama, her life and activism never dwindled. Max Bond joined the Foreign Service in 1944, and she and her husband traveled abroad throughout the 1950s and 1960s, and although they were not in America for the bulk of the Civil Rights Movement, they remained vocal for the rights and well-being of marginalized groups. During that time Ruth taught at Universities in Haiti, Liberia and Malawi, taught English at the YWCA in Sierra Leone, taught Tunisian women and children basic sewing and garment construction, and acted as a French-English translator for craftspeople in Haiti. She was a founding member of the African American Women’s Association and the Foreign Service Women's Association.

 

Ruth Clement Bond died in 2005 at the age of 101, leaving behind a legacy that transformed black craft, women's craft and, in turn, American History. If you find Ruth Clement Bond of interest, I would highly recommend reading her interview here. The interview was conducted by Jewell Fenzi in 1992 as part of the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Program. She has quite a bit of sass, and it is really a great read.

Thanks, and talk soon.

-Aaron

Man with Crane, designed by Ruth Clement Bond, stitched by Rosa Marie Thomas, 1934. Museum of Arts and Design, gift of Mrs. Rosa Philips Thomas in 1994

Man with Crane, designed by Ruth Clement Bond, stitched by Rosa Marie Thomas, 1934. Museum of Arts and Design, gift of Mrs. Rosa Philips Thomas in 1994