This entry originally appeared as an email newsletter in July 2022.
With any luck, this newsletter finds you enjoying the summer! Our dyeing forecast here in Central PA has been decidedly mixed; some days, it’s dry, warm, and beautiful — absolutely perfect for dyeing and drying outside! Others, it’s been overcast, humid, and unpredictably wet. Yuck!
The extra dye space has given us the ability to experiment with new materials and processes, including new tannins, different dyebath recipes, and overdyeing — all in trying to answer the question “So, how many colors can you get from natural dyes?” Playing with recipes, exhausting baths, swapping tannins, tweaking the PH, and overdyeing have really expanded our color range. Thought Tums were just for indigestion? Turns out they’re also the secret to unlocking some really vibrant colors, too!
Each of the finished bags you see at a show or on the website starts with an individually dyed piece of linen. While you may have seen reels of makers cutting yards of beautiful fabric, our process is much smaller. Because everything is hand-dyed, it’s imperative that we take into consideration the character of each individual piece, including how best to work in the inevitable variations that occur. Once we know what bag each piece will become, we back it with dressmaker’s weight interfacing to help provide shape, structure, and body.
We then cut the bag, choosing which areas to highlight, and find the right contrast print to bring out the natural variations endemic to the dye process. We’ll then select the contrast fabric and begin thinking about the embroidery work. Like our linen, our floss is also hand-dyed in small batches; we rely on recycled cupro cotton dyed by TurtleMade and botanically-dyed six-strand floss dyed by Stuart Moore Textiles. More often than not, we combine both for a unique visual texture, choosing stitches that highlight the beauty of the floss.
Once the embroidery is complete, a bag can (finally!) be assembled.
So, how long does it take to make a Good Water and Co. bag or tote? Well, it varies. Depending upon the color we’re going for, the dye process can take anywhere from three days to a week. The embroidery, depending upon the design, can take anywhere from eight to twenty hours, usually spread across several days. Add on a few hours for sewing at the end and you truly see the slow in slow fashion.