April Speaker | Alissa Allen: Color, Craft & Connection: Mushroom Dyeing as a Practice of Presence & Renewal

Please join us on April 21 for this month's featured speaker--after you finish your taxes!

FFSC members gather together on the third Tuesday of the month from September through May to catch up, discuss club business, and learn from interesting speakers. Plus, you can bring any fungi you have been lucky enough to find for identification!

This month we feature Alissa Allen, of Mycopigments.

Would you like to get to know this month's speaker better? Join us for Dinner with the Speaker at 5pm, prior to this event.

Life is relentless. Between work, family, community, and self-care — and the endless noise competing for our attention — it's easy to feel untethered. In this talk, fiber artist and forager Alissa Allen shares how mushroom foraging and natural dyeing have become her anchor — a slow, restorative practice that returns her to herself, season after season. From finding your first mushrooms and lichens to running your first dye experiment, this is an accessible and inspiring introduction to mushroom and lichen dyeing as a practice of presence, curiosity, and deep connection — with nature, with community, and with the next generation.  

About the Speaker

Alissa Allen is a naturalist, textile artist, and founder of Mycopigments (2012), based in Washington state. She is widely known for sharing her love of mushroom and lichen dyeing through in-person workshops and Mushroom and Lichen Dyers United, her no-cost public outreach platform of over 50,000 members worldwide.

Committed to advancing the art, science, and craft of natural dyeing, Alissa's teaching is rooted in curiosity, ethical harvesting, and the deep connections that form between people and the places they inhabit. Her expertise is recognized in True Colors: World Masters of Natural Dyes and Pigments (K. Recker, 2019), and her work was recently featured in Craftsmanship Magazine in Kimberly Coburn's February 2025 profile, "Alissa Allen's Mycopigments Create a 'Palette of Place.'"

A committed presence on the international natural dye stage, Alissa has participated in five International Fungi and Fiber Symposia — including Norway, Canada, Gran Canaria, and the 20th Symposium, which she hosted in Port Townsend, WA — and looks forward to the 22nd Symposium in Latvia. This October she returns to Mexico with The Fungivore for a week-long program in Chiapas, continuing a collaborative exploration of fungal color alongside traditional textile communities.

"When you act with reciprocity, exchanging gifts from the wild for community care of wild spaces, there is hope for a healthier planet."

Alissa Allen

Founder of Mycopigments and Mushroom and Lichen Dyers United

IG @mycopigments

Mycopigments.com 

Mushroom and Lichen Dyers United 

Mushroom Dyers Trading Post 

Up coming workshop with Alissa