Little & Wild Summer Sessions
Join Lexi from Little & Wild, guiding you through a summer of natural dyeing.
You may think of natural dye colours as muddy and dull, but there are some fantastic hues from pink to bright yellow. Each colour experiment is dependent upon the kind of water you used, the freshness of your materials, the mordants you use or don’t use, and the type of fibres you are dyeing. Other dependents are the temperature of your dye pot, the length of time you allow it to sit, and whether or not it’s the first, second, or fourth item in the dye pot. Learn everything you need to know to grow and harvest for natural dyeing.
Each session is 2.5 hours and start at 5.30pm here at Gather in Ludlow.
Session one - 13 June - Natural dyeing with silk ribbon
Session two - 11 July - Natural dyeing with wool
Session three - 1 August - Bundle dyeing
Free places via our bursary scheme
Gather offers two free bursary places per workshop and would love to hear from anyone who is keen to claim their free place on this workshop with Lexi. Email hello@morethanacowork.com to find out more on our bursary offer, just let us know what workshop you're interested in.
Little & Wild Flowers
The birth of Little & Wild was something of an accident. Lexi Morris, the founder, had set herself the personal challenge of providing her then restaurant business Coach House Norbury with home grown blooms throughout the year. She fell short initially but only just and now, having researched, explored and practised, she can. Lexi also fell in love with the cottage flowers that she could grow from a simple pack of seeds.
It was during her research into the flower industry that Lexi became aware of how unsustainable many flowers are and how a small group of British growers are trying to change that. Having worked for many years in the food industry, both at a large factory and a small micro level, and abroad in New Zealand, she had a realisation that it was just not food that could be produced at a local level. Just like local food changes with the seasons, so do flowers.
"From the earliest tiny spring bulbs of snowdrops, crocus, muscari and narcissi to hyacinths and the most gorgeous double and parrot tulips. Cottage garden favourites then come into play in May - the billowing sweet rocket and honesty, ever dependable sweet williams and foxgloves, alongside perennials such as peonies, geums and aquilegia. The cutting garden is a dream from early summer - swoon worthy garden roses (my collection of David Austen roses is growing each year), cornflowers, ammi, orlaya, sweet peas, scabious, phlox, stocks alongside textural grasses and seed pods. As the year slides into Autumn the colours turn to golden yellows and orange with sunflowers, rudbeckia, amaranthus and dahlias. Once the first frosts hit sometime in October (or early November if we’re really lucky) most of garden blackens and it is here that the dried material which we have saved throughout the year comes into play. Alongside the forced bulbs of amaryllis and paperwhites, these see us through until the familiar sequence starts again in spring."
More about Little & Wild here