WHEN SHE WAS growing up in South Africa, Helen Curry learned to knit and sew in school along with reading and writing.

After she married, she sailed away — literally — to the South Seas, eventually landing in the village of Coromandel, New Zealand, where she joined a handcraft group.

“My interest in fiber really blossomed when I was in New Zealand,” Curry said. “I immersed myself in the wool, the spinning and the dyeing.”

Curry is a founding teacher at Sunfield Waldorf School, where students learn to knit in the first grade.

By seventh grade, which Curry teaches, they are carding and spinning yarn and weaving samplers.

This fall, her middle students are taking their fiber arts skills to a whole new level by growing plants that are tinctorius, e.g., used for staining and dyeing cloth and yarn.

“I can’t wait to dye the stuff we spun,” said Enomi Hawk, 12.

Dye garden

Curry said she had wanted a dye garden for a long time, but it wasn’t possible until last spring, when the school’s Washington State University/Jefferson County Master Gardeners awarded the school a $500 grant for the project.

The grant paid for tools, soaker hoses and plants that were chosen from A Dyer’s Guide and available locally at Four Corners Nursery.

The students put the plants in two long rows according to the color spectrum: Japanese indigo at one end, St. John’s wart at the other.

In between are purple basil, bronze fennel, German camomile, yarrow, coreopsis, chrysanthemums, marigolds and dahlias.

When processed, dahlia blossoms, even dark crimson, create one color dye.

“They make green,” said Moonblossom Dean as she picked bright yellow blossoms.

Since school started, the students have been picking the blossoms and stashing them in the freezer.

Last week, they were harvesting dahlias and coreopsis, which makes an orange, yellow or bronze dye.

Making dyes, using mordants and dyeing yarn will be the students’ chemistry block during the year, Curry said.

“That’s the beauty of the dye garden,” she said. “It’s chemistry, but it’s also real, meaningful work. It’s not just formulas on a board.”

First frost

The first dye session will be held this fall before the first frost because Japanese indigo must be used fresh, Curry said.

A few weeks ago, she attended an indigo-dyeing workshop led by Elizabeth Merill at Ananda Hills Farm in Chimacum.

Curry learned the steps of preparing a vat of indigo dye, which involves using a chemical to remove the oxygen, then sliding the wool into the vat.

“The magic is when you take it out of the vat,” Curry said. “Originally, it is green, but it turns blue before your eyes as the dye molecules combine with oxygen.”

The students will document their results by producing a dye catalogue.

Each page of the catalogue will have a pressed flower, a drawing of the flower and samples of dyed fiber, Curry said, along with a “recipe” of the process.

Next year, she hopes to add yellow cosmos and madder, which in cooler climates takes five years to mature before the roots can be dug up and used.

“It’s about knowing where things come from,” she said of the Waldorf philosophy that education should be rooted in the physical world.

All the students at Sunfield School, which is located on a farm, do chores, caring for the chickens, goats and sheep.

The shearer comes twice a year to divest the seven Cotswolds of their coats.

The students clean the fleeces, and tease and card the fiber by hand, Curry said.

Spinning wheels

Last spring, the middle school students learned to spin using drop treadles and spinning wheels.

“Working with your hands is integral to the curriculum,” Curry said. “It’s about using all of your brain.”

This fall, they are weaving two-color patterns on laptop looms made by Jesse Nichol, who is in Curry’s class.

Jesse’s mother, Susie Nichol, provides instruction.

They are using purchased yarn, but once their handspun yarn, which is off-white, is dyed, the students will use it for weaving as well.

Weaving a two-color pattern on a loom, whose warp and woof are basically a grid, covers another academic area.

“It’s great for learning math,” Curry said.

Four Corners Nursery gave the school a discount on plants, Curry said, and Jennie Watkins of Ananda Hills Farm passed along surplus indigo seedlings grown by Merill.

As the garden grows, it could be used for community workshops on growing and using natural dyes, Curry said.

The grant from the WSU/Jefferson County Master Gardeners was part of $5,340 awarded last spring for 13 grants for garden and plant-related education and community projects.

Master Gardeners grant

The Master Gardeners have also given Sunfield School grants for an edible garden and native trees and shrubs to create a windbreak around the property.

“We have really been blessed by them,” Curry said.

Applications for WSU Master Gardeners fall grants are due Saturday.

Spring grant applications are due May 1.

For more information, visit http://mg.jefferson.wsu.edu and click on “Grants/Scholarships” under the “Resources” menu.

Sunfield is a pre-kindergarten through eighth-grade Waldorf school located on 81-acre Sunfield Farm in Port Hadlock.

For more information, visit www.sunfieldfarm.org.

For more information about fiber workshops at Ananda Hills Farm, visit www.anandahillsfarm.wordpress.com.

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Jennifer Jackson writes about Port Townsend and Jefferson County every Wednesday. To contact her with items for this column, phone 360-379-5688 or email jjackson@olypen.com.