Gardening club demonstrates natural fiber dying

by Nick Thomsen

This afternoon, the SCAD Gardening club in conjunction with the Fibers department hosted their annual Fiber Dying event. Students from every year and major gathered around a singular table with one goal in mind—to create beautiful and environmentally friendly designs using natural dyes. Leaves, berries and flowers scattered the table where enthusiastic students got ready to experiment.

Lulu Pennell, first year student, creates different patterns in fabric using locally sourced materials courtesy of the Gardening Club. The Fibers department and Gardening club hosted their annual Fiber Dying event at the Hive Garden on Friday, April 26. [Nick Thomsen/scaddistrict.com]

Fibers Professor, Jessica Smith, and multidisciplinary artist, Catherine Cross Tsintzos, mentored students and demonstrated the dying process with indigo and items battered into the vinegar-soaked fabric. Students are encouraged to pull different resources from the garden and use them as different mediums in their fabric dying endeavors.

When SCAD’s community garden opened in early 2013, clubs were immediately jumping on the opportunity to use the space. Six years later and the garden is still blooming with produce planted and maintained by students from the Gardening club, which was founded in 2017.

Adroit students pound flowers and leaves into Fabric to demonstrate the use of natural made dyes. [Nick Thomsen/scaddistrict.com]

The SCAD Gardening Club encourages students to live healthy through environmentally conscious planted produce. Onions, cabbage and kale are goods grown at the Garden regularly. Students relish in the haven they’ve created and get to see the reward after weeks and months of constant care. The club recently hosted their first Herbal Tea Bag Session where attendees were able to review herbs grown and create their very own tea bags.

Catherine Cross Tsintzos teaches students the process of dying using indigo. Tsintzos helped create the rich indigo used Friday afternoon. [Nick Thomsen/scaddistrict.com]

Some might not know, but the Garden club even also provides produce to the Hive cafeteria where students can taste the quality compared to GMO ridden produce.

SCAD Gardening Club meets every other Friday at 2:30. To find more information about the club, visit their Instagram and Facebook.