State Museum demonstration is to dye for

Johns Island artist Leigh Magar will demonstrate how to dye textiles with indigo Tuesday at the South Carolina State Museum. Magar has been creating a palmetto flag with hand-dyed fabric as part of the South Carolina Makers exhibit in the Lipscomb Art Gallery. Once a month for the past eight months, Magar has occupied a pop-up workspace in the museum, stirring vats of dye with rubber gloves and sewing pieces onto the large flag pattern.

“There are some dyers that like having blue hands but I don’t. It’s messy,” she said. The flag is three-fourths of the way complete.

A milliner by trade, Magar owns Magar Hatworks in Charleston. She has recently developed a new label called Madame Magar, which integrates fashion and art through handmade garments and accessories.

Magar sources fabric from a South Carolina mill and dyes and paints with indigo and natural dyes. She grows indigo in her yard to supply future projects and collections.

“I’ve always loved blue, and it’s amazing the different variations of blue that you get,” she said. “When you hand dye, most of the time you never get exactly the same color, so every piece of fabric will be different.”

See her in action 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday at the museum at 301 Gervais St.

Erin Shaw, eshaw@thestate.com

This story was originally published February 22, 2016 at 2:30 PM with the headline "State Museum demonstration is to dye for."