Easter Eggs, Southwest-Style
(Page 2 of 3)
March/April 1985
By the Mother Earth News editors
DYEING INSTRUCTIONS
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First, chop the dye materials you'll be using into small pieces and put each kind into a separate enamel, steel, or glass pan. Don't use aluminum pans; for some reason, dye doesn't adhere well to eggs cooked in such containers.
Next, place the eggs—at room temperature—in with the dye material . . . pour enough water into each container to cover the eggs . . . and add a teaspoon of vinegar to each dye bath (except an onion-skin bath, which doesn't require the mordant). You may also want to experiment at times by adding a pinch of alum as a mordant along with the vinegar, since the extra ingredient often changes the dye's hue.
Now bring the dye mixture to a boil, and let the eggs and coloring materials simmer together for 20 minutes and then remove the pan from the heat. Exactly how long you leave the eggs in any given dye depends, of course, on the intensity of coloration you're after. Some of the materials produce pleasing hues with only the initial 20-minute cooking, while others do better if allowed to remain in the bath (off the heat) for longer periods. For example, eggs colored with either red cabbage or sassafras will take on a darker, deeper hue if you leave them, covered, in the dye in the refrigerator overnight. In any case, when the eggs have been dyed to look the way you want them to, take them out of the bath, rinse them in cold water, and let them dry.
NOW TO SPRUCE 'EM UP!
Once the eggs are thoroughly dry, select a southwestern Indian design and copy it freehand onto an egg with a soft-lead pencil. Many beautiful Indian designs consist only of a series of simple squares, triangles, dots, curves, circles, or teardrops. For ideas, check your library for books and magazines featur ing primitive art. (A good and inexpensive paperback on the subject is Primitive Art, by Frank Boas, available from Dover Publications, 31 E. Second St., Mineola, NY 11501, for $5.95 plus 85¢ shipping and handling.)
Next, trace over the penciled designs, using a fine-tipped lettering pen and black India ink. I use a B-5 Speedball pen for the basic designs and a quill pen for fine details, but any fine-tipped pen should work just as well.
To keep smearing to a minimum, hold the egg with your middle or index finger and thumb while you paint the front and back central designs first and then fill in the designs that circle the egg from top to bottom. Finally, place the egg in an eggcup to decorate the top and bottom sections.
