A Step-by-Step Workshop
How To Turn A Plain Cotton Tote Into Deep Indigo Cloth In A Single Afternoon
(Even if you have never dyed a thing in your life)
A Step-by-Step Workshop
(Even if you have never dyed a thing in your life)
Same bucket. Same indigo. What changes is how the cloth is folded and bound before it goes into the dye. We start with a tote because it is cheap, flat, and forgiving enough to practice on. Once you know how the folds and bindings control the dye, you can use the same technique on cotton napkins, linen tea towels, pillow covers, scarves, table runners, and shirts.
Nora B.
Bookkeeper, Athens, Ohio
I keep the books for a landscaping company two towns over, and I bring that up early on purpose. Nobody has ever accused me of being an artist. I am the person who alphabetizes things. As it turns out, that is closer to the skill this craft rewards.
The hook for me was watching the color arrive. A bundle comes up out of the vat looking yellow-green and slightly wrong, and then oxygen gets to it and blue moves across the cloth over about forty seconds. Years in, I still stop what I am doing and watch.
My back step is just wide enough for a five-gallon bucket, and from May through October that is where most of my Saturdays go. The neighbors work it out from the clothesline.
I built this workshop because the folding itself is straightforward. What goes wrong is nearly always the sequence, and that is hard to pick up from a video that starts halfway through. Getting somebody to that forty seconds is the whole reason I made it.
Module 1
The 15-minute setup that turns a cheap bucket of water into a living dye that paints deep, even blue into everything you dip.
Module 2
The pattern isn't drawn on. It's the part you hide from the dye. This is the folding and binding, and it's easier than wrapping a birthday present.
Module 3
The one mental flip that separates a grey, blotchy tote from something people ask you about on the street. This is the module the free videos leave out.
Module 4
Ten minutes at the bucket where most totes are ruined, and the person holding them won't find out for another two hours.
Module 5
The two minutes everything else was for. The bindings come off, the pattern appears, and this is the part everyone films.
BONUS #1
Your pieces are only as good as the day they fade, so this short guide shows you exactly how to wash, set, and care for indigo so your blues stay rich and colorfast for years, not weeks.
BONUS #2
Every fold makes a different pattern, and once you can see which fold makes which, you stop guessing and start designing. This is the map from fold to finished tote, all laid out flat.
BONUS #3
Forty traditional shibori patterns drawn out flat, fold by fold, with the binding shown right there on the sheet. Follow the map, fold your tote, dip it. You will not run out of patterns to make for a very long time.
BONUS #4
Of the four, this is the one I would open first. Once blue makes sense, the same folding works with color pulled from kitchen scraps and backyard plants, so your palette is never limited to indigo again. It sounds like a second course, and it very nearly is.
Total value $203
You pay $47
One-Time Purchase. Lifetime Access.
Everything unlocks at checkout, and you have 30 days to change your mind.
You will probably ruin one, and it is worth planning for that. Blank totes run a couple of dollars and one kit will dye a stack of them, so the first mistake costs about what a coffee does. Module 2 covers the fold-and-dip that gets nearly every first tote through the vat clean anyway.
Tie-dye is loud and random by design. Shibori is quiet and deliberate: one deep color, clean geometry, and a piece that ends up in daily use rather than at the back of a drawer. Nobody has ever picked up a good indigo tote and thought about summer camp.
A bucket outdoors is the requirement. A back step, a patio, a driveway, a garage with the door open. Indigo wants air more than it wants space, and the whole setup packs back into the bucket when you are done with it.
Nothing has to be decided today. Take the workshop now, mix a vat, bind a couple of practice cloths, and watch what happens when they come out. If it turns out this is not your kind of afternoon, one email inside 30 days puts the money back on your card within a day. I will not ask what happened, and there is no form to fill out. Keep the guides regardless. Nothing I write here will do what the first bundle does when it comes out of the bucket and starts turning blue in your hands, so I would rather you went and saw that.
None whatsoever. The workshop opens on the assumption that you have never dyed anything, and the first vat you build gets tested on cheap practice cloth well before you put a bag you care about anywhere near it.
Starting from nothing, budget roughly $35 to $50 for the first batch. That covers an indigo kit at around $20 to $30, a five-gallon bucket, rubber bands and string, a couple of wooden blocks or clamps, and rubber gloves. Blank cotton totes are a few dollars each. The second batch costs a fraction of that, because the bucket, blocks, and clamps are reusable and one kit goes a long way. A shopping list with links is included.
Yes, with ordinary kitchen sense. A reduced indigo vat is alkaline, so gloves go on, you keep it away from your eyes, and you mix the powder outdoors or beside an open window so you are not breathing it in. Beyond gloves, no special safety equipment is required. Put the bucket where a pet or a grandchild cannot tip it, and keep it covered between dips. Module 1 walks through the setup.
Three to four hours from a flat bag to a finished one, though most of that is waiting between dips with nothing to do. The videos run shorter than that, so plenty of people watch the whole workshop the night before and dye on the Saturday.
Anything made of natural fiber works: napkins, pillow covers, scarves, table runners, plain cotton shirts, linen tea towels. The tote is the teaching project because it is cheap, flat, and forgiving. The folding and the vat behave the same way whatever you put in them, and Module 1 covers the five-second test for whether a fabric will take dye.
It is. Forty-seven dollars once, and that closes the transaction. Everything described on this page is included at that price, and there is nothing further to buy once you are in.
Write to me any time in the first 30 days and the money goes back on your card the next day, with no explanation needed. You keep the four guides either way.
Your login keeps working for as long as the workshop exists. Every video and bonus stays in your account to rewatch whenever you want, and anything I add later shows up there at no extra cost. People tend to come back to the Pattern Vault a year in, hunting for a fold they have not tried.
Prerecorded video, streamed on a phone, tablet, or computer. The four guides and the supply list download as PDFs. Everything is shot close-up and over the shoulder, so you can lean a phone against something near the bucket and work along with wet hands.
Free videos hand out fragments, which is why so many first attempts come out muddy. Shibori is an order-of-operations craft: the fold decides the pattern, the vat decides the depth, and the wash decides whether either survives a laundry cycle. The workshop runs those in order, start to finish, with the fix for each common mistake sitting at the point where the mistake happens.
Access lands the moment payment clears. If there is a bag and a bucket already in the house, you could have cloth in the vat this evening.
One-Time Purchase. Lifetime Access.
Everything unlocks at checkout, and you have 30 days to change your mind.
Last updated: August 2026
By purchasing and accessing The Shibori Dyeing Workshop ("the Workshop"), you agree to these terms.
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Safety disclaimer. Indigo dyeing involves an alkaline dye vat and dye powder. Follow the safety guidance in Module 1, wear gloves, and mix powder in a ventilated space. You accept responsibility for working safely in your own home.
Results. The workshop is educational. Outcomes vary with individual effort, materials, and practice, and we make no guarantee of a specific result.
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Last updated: August 2026
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