A Field Guide to Japanese Indigo: Piedmont, NC

A focused, 21-page companion guide to the one plant that started it all for me — Japanese indigo. Whether you're growing it for the first time, coming from one of my workshops, or just chasing that particular shade of blue that only this plant makes, this guide walks you through the entire arc: seed to leaf, leaf to pigment, pigment to vat, and vat to finished cloth.

Inside, you'll find the real chemistry behind why indigo works the way it does (green plant, colorless compound, blue only on contact with air), two no-vat fresh-leaf techniques for same-day color, a full water-extraction method for making your own stored pigment, an exact-measurement chart for building a traditional fructose vat at any size, and the itajime shibori fold-and-clamp technique I teach in my workshops. There's history too — indigo's deep roots stretching back to ancient Babylon, its hard colonial history in the American South, and the Japanese aizome tradition that shaped my own practice.

What's inside:

• Growing Japanese indigo from seed, including seed-starting and harvest timing

• The chemistry of indigo, explained simply

• Fresh-leaf techniques: the blender method and salt mash, no vat required

• A complete water-extraction method for storing your own pigment

• A fructose vat recipe with an exact-measurement chart, scalable from a test jar to a double batch

• Itajime shibori, step by step

• Caring for indigo-dyed goods

• A curated list of indigo-specific teachers, suppliers, and further reading

• Blank dye-record pages sized for tracking vat ratios, dip counts, and results

This isn't a dense technical manual — it's the exact process I use myself, written the way I'd actually explain it to someone standing next to my vat.

Format: Instant digital download, PDF, 21 pages, sized for print or easy screen reading.