Natural Dye For Beginners: Design and Print Onto Silk

Natural dye and screen print techniques.

Key details

Location

Penryn Campus

Course duration

2 days

Course overview

Come and join us for a two-day introduction to natural dye and screen print, suitable for complete beginners. You’ll experience the natural dye process from start to finish, work with plants in our natural dye garden, and leave with your own gorgeous one-off silk scarf that you have dyed and printed.

This is a great introduction to the world of natural dye and will also introduce you to screen printing techniques. Based in our wonderful facilities at the Fashion and Textiles Institute on our Penryn campus, you’ll be supported by two of our Senior Technicians who will guide you through your natural dye journey.

Tuition fees per individual: £250

Location: Fashion & Textiles Institute, Penryn Campus

How to apply

See course dates below that are available to book.

Upcoming Short Courses

Natural Dyes

Mon 18 Aug 2025

2-day course: 18th and 19th August | Price: £250

Natural dye for beginners: design and print onto silk

In-person

Come and join us for a 2 day introduction to natural dye and screen print, suitable for complete beg...

Natural dye for beginners: design and print onto silk

If no upcoming Short Courses are displayed above, get in touch with us for more information.

Course details

This is a two-day practical and creative natural dye course suitable for complete beginners. You’ll learn about the natural dye process and will leave with a beautiful, one-off silk scarf that you have naturally dyed and printed with your own creative pattern.

You’ll be based in our specialist dye labs and textile studio at our Fashion and Textiles Institute, and will make use of the natural dye garden in our beautiful walled orchard. With plenty of time for experimentation and play, this course will give you an opportunity to get creative whilst learning about the science behind using plant matter to create sustainable natural dyes for clothing.

You will learn about how we grow and process plant matter for dye, spending time in our natural dye garden to view and collect suitable plants. You will get hands-on experience of creating natural, sustainable textile dye, using hot water techniques to experiment with the plants learning to manipulate and generate a variety of colours from one plant.

There will be time for experimentation for various colour modifiers and assistors, increasing your understanding of colour theory using natural dyes. You will create a swatch book of naturally dyed fabrics during the course that you can take away with you for reference.

Following experimentation, and using inspiration from the garden, you will be supported to dye a final piece of silk and design a creative print pattern that you will screen print onto your silk scarf using natural dyes.

Please see the course outline for full information of each day’s activities.

This course is led by Alice Selwood, a Senior Technician at our Fashion and Textiles Institute who specialises in natural dye; and Freya Dorgan, a Senior Technician at our Fashion and Textiles Institute who specialises in printed textiles.

You will take the following items away with you after the course:

A swatch book of natural dye experiments, for your reference
Your finished hand-dyed and custom printed silk scarf

This course includes tea and coffee, along with all the materials you’ll need. Please bring a packed lunch with you.

Day one

On our first day, we will start with some time in our natural dye garden getting our hands dirty. We’ll spend time learning about and working with the plants, learning about the environment they need to grow in and talking about the dyes they produce. Following this, we’ll move back to the studio to start working with two plants in particular: Madder and Weld. We will use hot water techniques to manipulate the plants and generate a variety of colours from one plant, creating a series of naturally dyed swatches. There will be time for experimentation with colour modifiers and assistors to increase your understanding of colour theory using natural dyes. Finally, we’ll finish the first day by dying a base colour onto your silk scarf.

Day two

Day two will be spent designing and then creating a print pattern for your silk scarf. This will include an introduction to the screen print process and a chance to experiment with how this works using natural dyes. After you have finalised your design and had plenty of chance to practice on test swatches, you’ll then be supported to screen print your design onto your silk scarf. Along with your completed swatch book of tests, you’ll take your finished silk scarf away with you.

Course leader: Freya Dorgan

Freya graduated from Falmouth University with a BA(Hons) in Textile Design in 2012. Since then, she has worked as a Senior Technician within the Fashion & Textiles Institute specialising in print and colour. Within her role, Freya teaches a large variety of workshops with a focus on printmaking to students of all ages and abilities. Outside of her role at Falmouth, Freya is an illustrator working with clients such as Tate St Ives, creating fun and colourful imagery with a focus on play and humour. As part of her creative practice Freya also runs workshops for the community empowering people to get creative through printmaking and illustration.  

Additional staff members:

Alice Selwood

Alice Selwood is a Senior Technician at our Fashion and Textiles Institute who specialises in sustainability, natural dye, and textile design. Inspired by strong organic and structural forms, sustainability is key to her design process. Alice pushes the boundaries of traditional natural dyeing within her textile work, embracing the wide variety of colours nature can provide. Through her post-graduate research, she has been developing alternative bio-plastics through natural materials including seaweed and food waste.  Alongside this, Alice works commercially as a textile designer creating elegantly detailed embroidery and embellishment for luxury fashion and interiors. 

How you'll learn

This is a practical course where you will get hands-on experience of every step of the natural dye process, from working with the plants in our natural dye garden through to dyeing and printing a finished textile piece. Expect to get involved at every step of the process, as our course leaders guide you through with demonstrations and support.

Who is this course for

This course has been designed for total beginners to natural dye, and is suitable for anyone with an interest in learning about natural dye, in growing natural dye plants, and / or in sustainability in fashion and textiles. No prior knowledge or experience is required.

Expect to get involved with each stage of the natural dye journey, starting from learning about plants in our natural dye garden right through to dyeing your final item and creating print patterns for it using natural dyes. This is a hands-on course with practical learning, suitable for anyone with an interest in natural dye. No experience is required, this course has been designed for complete beginners to natural dyeing.

An outline of the timings to expect each day is below.

Arrival: 9.30am (welcome and refreshments)

Morning session: 10am – 1pm

Lunch: 1pm – 2pm

Afternoon session: 2pm - 5pm

All materials you will need are provided. Please wear closed-toe shoes and bring a suitable coat to explore the dye garden in case of rain. We’ll supply a lab coat for the natural dyeing sessions but bear in mind you’ll be working with dyes, so we recommend wearing clothes that you don’t mind getting messy just as a precaution.

Tea and coffee will be provided each day. You may wish to bring a reusable water bottle with you.

All materials you will need are included in the course fee, along with tea and coffee each day.

Tea/coffee is included, with all diets catered for. Please note: lunch is not included in the course cost, we recommend bringing a packed lunch or visiting one of our on-campus cafés. 

This course is taught in our specialist textile and natural dye lab facilities at our Fashion and Textiles Institute, on our Penryn campus.

There is plenty of parking available on our Penryn campus and you can also reach us via a range of public transport options. You can find out more, here.

For campus maps and information on visiting us, please visit our How to find us page.

This course is suitable for complete beginners to natural dyeing and screen printing, with no previous experience required.

Accommodation is not included in this course cost. If you would like to book accommodation, please see our accommodation for short course students page for a range of options.  

There are wheelchair accessible areas in the studio, however there are some limited access areas that are used in this course. These are the natural dye garden, the dye lab and the screen wash area. Unfortunately these are not step-free. Please contact us if you have questions about accessibility requirements.

How to apply

To apply for this course, make your selection from the available dates below, this will take you to an event page where you will be able to book yourself onto the course via the Book now link.

Tuition fees per individual: £250