WELCOME AND HELLO!

Whether you are participant just stumbled upon us, welcome to this community of placed based color foragers!

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Partnering with individuals, schools, and small communities, Variegated Places invites participants (and maybe you?) to forage in their personal landscapes for a dye plant and contribute the found colors to the Color Catalogue. Through each individual's experience we will create a communally built library of color for Portland, Oregon. 

 

Each participant receives a kit with foraging and dyeing instructions with mordanted* pieces of fabric and/or yarn. The kit is intended to help facilitate an experience, inviting participants to slow down and focus on their surroundings with the intention of looking for something you cannot yet see. 

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Designed and developed by Cydni Carter Lopez during COVID-19 Quarantine this project is looking at what craft and a relationship with the outdoors can do for us as humans, especially during times of isolation.

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Currently this project is focused on the landscapes near Portland, Oregon but there is the ability to to expand it with interest! Just let us know you want a kit!

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*mordant - derived from the Latin word morderé, meaning to bite. In natural dyeing fibers must be treated with a metallic salt bath (the mordant) which 'bites' onto the fibers and then in turn bites onto the pigments in the dye bath. Many plants will not transfer their color if no mordant is used so its important. It is really what takes the color on the fiber from a stain to a dye - making it more color and lightfast.