Dye Study With Carol Soderlund at the Crow TImberframe Barn

Everyone has a bucket list.  One of the things on mine has been to take at least one workshop at the Crow Timberframe Barn in Ohio.  That dream came true this spring.
After getting better acquainted with Carol Soderlund last summer during the SDA Conference in San Antonio I decided to combine two things I wanted to do:  learn more about dyeing neutrals on cloth and taking a workshop at the Crow Barn.  Since I was going for one workshop and Carol was offering two, I thought I might as well take them both.  I am SO glad I did.
Out of respect for the proprietary information that Carol so generously shares with her students I will carefully share a few images here.
The first week I took a workshop called "The New Color Mixing For Quilters".  I learned so much!
The second week, "Neutral Territory:  50 Shades of Gray and 50 Shades of Brown".  We were on the hunt for neutrals...
The workshop setting is just wonderful as the Barn has an exceptional dye studio.  The upstairs has a design studio that is currently occupied by an independent study conducted by Nancy Crow.
Each day we are treated to nutritious, delicious lunch and dinner created by artist and chef Margaret Wolf.  Margaret has a wonderful cookbook that I purchased.  If you love to cook you will enjoy this!  The book is self-published, I think, so order from Margaret.
Here are a few images from my stay in Ohio:

A portion of the wet dye studio at the Crow Barn.  

I would have enjoyed college chemistry a lot more if we had been doing this....

Amazing to see what happens with each dye bath.  Transformational!

Look at all this gorgeous color.  Each piece is different!

Carol hugs all the color.

A stack of freshly dyed fabrics ready to cut

sorting all the colors...

Students work together to create a large set of colors that we use to make our dye notebooks.

Here are some of the gorgeous colors.

Trimmings....each is a different color!

Oops!  We are in the midwest and in the spring that means tornado weather....

Here we are gathered in the basement hallway to wait out a tornado warning.

Crow Barn exterior.

Carol holds up a couple sets of her dye colors. 

During the first week we created three sets using three different pure dye colors.

Some of my freeform dyed cloth:  silk, cotton, and silk-cotton Radiance.

Here is my work area at the B&B where I am staying.

I worked long hours to put together my notebook!

Samples of neutral experiments.

Chef and artist Margaret Wolf.

I love her!

Lunch at the Barn.

Some of Nancy's African basket collection hangs on the dining room wall.

As does her collection of hand-carved/decorated wood cooking tools.

Carved items are seen throughout the kitchen and dining room areas.

Dinner gathering with both workshops.

Week Two:  "Neutral Territory" experiments.  The larger "9 patch" consists

of nine different neutrals that we dyed.  There were many of these sets.

The long skinny pieces were gradations of one of the larger squares.

A peek at the lower level studio.  You can see many of the larger 9-patch sets hanging on the

design walls.  Over the week we added to these, and experimented with many many gradations 

in the search for more neutrals.  We found a lot!

Storm clouds over the town of Lancaster.  I stayed in a bed and breakfast during my time at the 

Crow Barn.  

A favorite item is this sewing machine "tractor" positioned at the base of the stairs.

I love it.