BETHEL — Rebecca Zicarelli’s bathtub is a splotchy blue, as are several small stained tubs on the edge of the porch. The clips and clamps she uses are blue, too.

Flashing 10 stained fingers, she said, “Blue nails are the epitome of cool.”

It’s all to create the vibrant, patterned indigo wall hangings that are strung along the porch and perpendicular clothesline.

Blue is where it’s at on Mason Street in Bethel.

Zicarelli said she started Village Blues after learning to dye natural fiber from Marty Elkin at A Wrinkle in Thyme Farm in Sumner.

At home her color lacked blue because she was not using the chemical indigo vats most dyers used. The summer before the pandemic, she found a more natural way to make an indigo vat promoted by a French chemist, Michel Garcia.

She began making shibori works on her front porch as she learned how to use the vat; an ongoing art show for neighbors who walked by.

Kate Webb at Bethel Area Arts and Music asked her to teach a class during COVID-19. “No one had done anything for them,” Zicarelli said, of the housebound students she taught to dye fabric on the lawn at the nearby historical society.

Today, six students are under a tent in the front yard learning the art of indigo dying. Before they arrive, Zicarelli and her assistant, Bri Bataran, boil the linen strips for an hour in washing soda and two drops of dish detergent.

Sisters-in-law Jill Lovejoy of Bethel and Cindy Chapman of Ohio bring children Emily and Andrew Lovejoy, and Alex and Lindsey Chapman.

Everyone receives a strip of kimono cotton cloth to make Itajime (clamped shibori) using the Seiki fold, a precise, accordion-style fold made on the bias that goes the length of the fabric. Seiki is a little bit like folding a flag.

“We use the word ‘wonky’ around here, a lot,” Bataran said of the off-corners.

One by one the students finish folding, then clamp their tight bundles of fabric with an acrylic shape of their choice.

They head to the porch to do three 15-minute soaks in the water tub and three 15-minute soaks in the dye tub. “You can meditate while you get your hands into every crack,” Zicarelli said.

“Don’t let it bubble, don’t let it drip. Don’t let it splash,” she said of the dye tub.

Bataran heads to the front yard to clip leaves from 15 potted indigo plants.

“Look at it when the sun is shining. You can see it flashing blue,” Zicarelli said of the plant’s leaves they rub over the openings of a plastic template onto organic cotton pretreated with soy milk.

“Roll the leaf and rub it like a crayon,” Bataran said.

Emily Lovejoy’s cherry blossom branch comes to life in greenish blue.

Art, science

Zicarelli and her husband live in The Alpine House built in 1886 by Abiel Chandler and popular with summer visitors looking to board. “It feels spacious,” Zicarelli said.

Inside, the first-floor bathroom beside the claw-footed tub is a huge vat wrapped in a heated blanket and warmed continuously. At the bottom of the vat there is a round acrylic template that accidentally fell in and will likely be there until the vat is emptied. She said the vat will eventually need to be rejuvenated, using some of the old vat to set the new vat with the right culture.

The vat has a permanent floating lid that limits its exposure to oxygen. Without it, mold would grow on top.

Zicarelli leaves the bathroom and returns with a bowl of seven peeled pears. She dumps the juice from the cooked pears , which has fructose, into the vat. Fructose reduces the liquid in the vat, removing the oxygen from the water.

Some of the hanging porch art has a pattern made from one-inch machine-sewn stitches. “Sewing is a way to ‘resist block’ Zicarelli said.

Bataran had the tedious task of removing each stitch after the wall hanging was dyed and dried.

In a cove of windows inside the house is the Singer 66-1 treadle she named Lotus and used to to finish edges and create the “resist art.”

Zicarelli said indigo was associated with colonialism so people turned their back on the dye tradition. Now, they are trying to reclaim those traditions, she said.

The students return to the edge of the porch to finally pull their creations out of the tubs.

“Art is patience,” Jill Lovejoy said.

The patterns on the fabric while vibrant, are green when they rinse them with the hose.

“The green will oxidize to blue,” Zicarelli said.

And rinsing them over the grass?

“Luckily it’s really good fertilizer,” she said.

Copy the Story Link