Lyme — Behind the barn, a clothesline sagged with bound, clamped bands of wet cloth transforming from lime green to deep ocean blue as the indigo dye oxidized in the spring air.

Across the field, seven alpacas grazed with chickens, while inside the barn, two fully warped 300-year-old looms awaited the return of the weavers to their half completed rugs. Spools of yarn spun not from synthetic fibers in an overseas factory, but in small mills in Connecticut, New York and New England from local sheep and alpacas filled a long table in one corner of the barn.

For teacher Stephanie Morton and her five students, engrossed in the ancient process of indigo dyeing on that mid-May Friday, the anachronistic collection of elements surrounding them made perfect sense. They were at the School for American Handweaving, where the tools and techniques of the pre-industrial world are celebrated in the cause of creativity.

“I do feel like I died and went to heaven,” said Morton, who founded the school at her home studio in Old Lyme in 2012, then expanded to Flat Rock Farm in January for special classes including weekend retreats. “We’re doing two- to four-day retreats here, where you can really come away from the world.”

In what farm owner Caryn Erickson called “a perfect partnership,” she and Morton this winter began offering weekend classes where students — most of them novices at the craft — learn how to weave an alpaca wool or recycled rag throw rug, coming away with a finished piece made on the antique looms Morton received as gifts. A basket weaving retreat is planned for late June. Retreat students stay in a charming barn handsomely converted into a bed-and-breakfast cottage, with Erickson preparing meals in the well-equipped kitchen. The indigo workshop, which uses the Japanese shibori masking technique with folds, blocks, string and clamps to create patterns on the cloth, is one of several classes for day students, offered both at Morton’s home studio and at the farm.

“I learned how to do loom rug weaving from Stephanie, and I was looking on her website and saw the indigo dyeing workshop and said, ‘Oh, I have to do that,’” said Janet Ohles, who came from her home in Pennsylvania to attend, staying with friends in Old Saybrook. “Stephanie’s house is like Grand Central Station for all the local weavers and yarn folks.”

Added Patty Oat of Noank, who was dyeing upholstery fabric for her couch at the workshop, “Stephanie is just an amazing teacher.”

Morton has already made her mark on southeastern Connecticut, having served as director of New London Landmarks for 3-1/2 years, then as service learning coordinator for New London schools for a dozen years. After getting laid off from that job, she decided to return to textile arts full time, a career she prepared for as a young woman at Friends World College and studies in Scandinavia, India, Nepal, England, the Netherlands and the Oaxaca region of Mexico. She decided to combine her passion for practicing and teaching hand weaving with an environmental theme: all the fibers she and her students use are regionally sourced or recycled. The underlying ethic of her own work and her teaching is to venerate the beauty and meaning of what can be fashioned by hand, using time-honored skills. On her website, she expresses it this way:

“Those things made with human hands are imbued with something more than just technical excellence,” she writes. “And these fabrics express and communicate human ideas, energy and emotions that enrich their practical value.”

Erickson recalled meeting Morton at a farmer’s market, admiring the woven rugs and patterned indigo scarves she was selling. She purchased Flat Rock Farm six years ago, she said. After fixing up the bed-and-breakfast cottage, Morton one day asked about the large barn at the back of the property. Built in the 1990s, Erickson said, it was just catch-all space for stuff she could get rid of. Morton had been given the two old looms — in pieces requiring assembly in a large open space — and needed someplace to set them up. Surrendering into serendipity, Erickson cleaned out the barn, and Morton and her weaving school moved in. A few smaller, modern looms now share the barn with the antique ones, but those are clearly Morton’s favorites.

“We had a loom raising party,” Morton recalled, showing photos of the large wooden beams being held by helpers as they were reattached. “These are old chestnut looms, very special and wonderful to weave on.”