Ian MacDonald had indeed made but a poor hand of the dyeing.

NPR: Excerpt: The Sherwood Ring

Production of the material includes several stages: silk floss is spun into yarn by hand, with patterns added by hand-tying bundles of yarn before dyeing the yarn with indigo, then the silk is woven using a back-tension loom.

UNESCO: Culture

Their family textile-dyeing-and-printing trade, handed down for generations, uses natural vegetable dyes and wooden hand blocks for printing.

FORBES: Magazine Article