Quantcast
Channel: Madesmith: Handmade craftsmanship. Ideas for mindful living. » Production
Viewing all articles
Browse latest Browse all 4

Meet your supplier: Rebekka Seale of Camellia Fiber Company

0
0

Tennesse based fiber-artist, Rebekka Seale sells gorgeous skeins of hand-spun and mill-spun yarns at her store Camellia Fiber Company. These yarns, hand-dyed with plant and mineral-based dyes or left in their natural colors, are sourced from alpaca farms based in the United States. Rebekka is quite serious about knowing where her materials are sourced from and she often documents foraging for dyeing ingredients and her trips to meet the adorable alpacas in her journal. We asked her a few questions about her love affair with yarn dyeing and spinning.

1. Tell us about your background.
I’m originally from the Gulf Coast of Alabama, a tiny little slice of paradise that’s all white sand, moonlight and magnolias. I love it there, but somehow migrated up to Nashville, Tennessee where I’ve been making a home with my husband for the past decade. I attended school here, ran a wedding cake business, worked as an illustrator…at one point I even drove an ice cream truck! Now I run my current business, Camellia Fiber Company, out of my studio in the Germantown neighborhood of Nashville.

2. How did you get started?
I’m an incredibly tactile person. Recently, in a conversation about art and artists, someone asked me if I consider myself an artist, and my response was “Not really, I mostly consider myself someone who just likes to touch things,” and then realized how very awkward that sounded! But, it’s true. I’ve always been drawn to the tangible, the palpable, the textural, the physical. Learning to knit just did me in. A friend from art school actually taught me to knit over Skype, which birthed an immediate obsession with yarn. It was really a matter of time before my experiments in spinning and dyeing led to a small business…I couldn’t afford to keep it all myself!

3.What attracted you to natural yarns and dyes?
I started working with natural dyes in the earliest days of my yarn dyeing experiments because they were easier to figure out. I never tried acid dyes because I didn’t really know where to source them, but I could cut marigold petals from my garden and boil them like a tea for vibrant sunshine gold on wool. I also worked with coffee, nuts, berries, red cabbage, and turmeric, and then branched out to some of the classic historical dyestuffs: logwood, madder root, indigo, woad. It was the colors that got me. I could barely believe how vibrant and pure they were, but also sort of mysterious, shifting in various lights. Naturally-dyed fiber can be one color in sunlight, and another color entirely in the shade. It almost seems to shimmer. And it’s also worth mentioning that naturally-dyed fibers tend to look beautiful together, forming lovely color palettes that just work, like they work in nature. And natural yarns…oh, they are wonderful! In my business, I only work with 100% natural fibers, primarily the “luxury” fibers: alpaca, mohair, fine wools, flax and silk. They range in character from soft to fuzzy to lustrous to springy to silky. And they all take dye differently, which makes the dye process ever-interesting!

4. Where do you source your fibers and dyes?
I sell a variety of mill-spun and hand-spun yarns (the hand-spun yarns are spun by me in my studio). I have been working with the Middle Tennessee Alpaca association for the past year, and they provide me with lots of gorgeous fiber from the fleeces of their herds. My favorite and best-selling yarn comes from Arcadia Alpacas, a local middle Tennessee farm. It’s a black and white marl spun from the fleeces of Feather and Penelope…two adorable alpacas that are quite good friends in real life. I love visiting them, especially when there are babies around! My dyestuffs are both foraged and purchased from suppliers. During the summer, it’s easy to find dyestuffs right in my own neighborhood like marigolds, pokeberries, blackberries, walnut hulls, etc. In the winter months, I buy wood chips and other materials from online suppliers.

5. What is your yarn production process like?
For my hand-spun yarn, I basically just sort the raw fiber and spin it on my wooden Kromski spinning wheel, which is very zen and sometimes puts my studiomate and I to sleep. I wind it into skeins, wash it, and hang it to dry. Usually I leave the hand-spun yarn undyed because the natural colors of the fibers are lovely already. When I dye mill-spun yarn, I set up shop in my backyard with ginormous aluminum stockpots. I measure out dyestuffs and mordants (which help bind natural pigments to fiber) and add them to the pots with the yarn. Most of my dyeing is done by solar power, so I just leave the dyebaths to cook in the sun for as long as it takes to achieve the desired color.

6. What are some of the other things you make?
I’ve done some sewn and knitted items for my shop this past year, but am really focusing on the yarn now. I love knowing that my product is going to become part of another person’s project, another person’s artwork. I’m selling to other makers, which is the greatest. Nothing is more rewarding in this business than seeing the beautiful weavings and sweaters and blankets that are made with yarn I supplied. It’s just infinitely satisfying.

unnamed unnamed-7 unnamed-6 unnamed-9 unnamed-8 unnamed-2 unnamed-5 unnamed-4 unnamed-10

 


Viewing all articles
Browse latest Browse all 4

Latest Images

Trending Articles





Latest Images