Natural Dye Sample Project: Part 3

Over the past few days I've told you about our natural dye experiments, the process we used, the mordants and afterbaths and the fibers.    In this last part, I'm going to talk a bit about each of the dyes.     The photo shows the alpaca samples.   Refer to Part 2 for pics of other samples that turned out super well. 

From left to right, the dyes we used were:   indigo, comfrey, goldenrod, osage orange, walnut, apple twigs, madder, brazilwood, cochineal, logwood.

I've done posts of some of these before, so follow the links [red or purple] to more information.

Indigo:   This dye requires an oxygen poor environment in which to bind the dye to the fiber.   This means you have to create a 'reduction vat'.   There are several ways to do that.  We used Rit Dye Remover as the reducing agent.   Worked great!     In the past I have also used sheep urine to achieve a reduction vat.   It worked, but smelled awful.     Tradition has it that the best thing to use in indigo vats was the urine of adolescent boys.    We didn't go there.

Comfrey:  This is a mostly medicinal plant that was brought over from Europe and has now naturalized.    I found some on this place and planted it around [Extremely effective for bruising, scrapes, cuts, etc.].   One of the dye books mentioned that it gave a green dye so we tried it.   It did give a nice light olive dye, but it takes a lot of leaves.    The photos don't give it justice.

Goldenrod:  We have acres of goldenrod out here.  Gather the flower tops.  It's best to use just as the flowers are opening.   You can cut it and dry it and save it for later and it works just fine.

Osage Orange: This is a tree native to this part of the world. Maclura pomifera has large soft seed balls.  It is an extremely useful tree - good for bug repellent as well as gorgeous orange dyes.    We used sawdust for the dye. 

Walnut:  Black walnuts in the hull give great dyes.   I saved ours and we used them after they had turned black.   It takes a couple of days of boiling to get a lot of dye out, but it sure gives gorgeous browns.

Apple twigs:  We pruned our apple tree early one spring and a few hours later noticed bright orange staining on the wood.    I did a little research and sure enough, it has been used for dyeing, so we tried it.    I gathered smaller twigs - finger sized - cut them up and boiled them in a pot.   I loved the color.

Madder:   Plenty has been written on the use of madder in dyeing.   We purchased the dried roots and used those.    It takes an extra day of soaking to release the dye, so plan ahead.

Brazilwood:  This is hard to come by these days and has become very expensive.  If you can get some, do!   It gives gorgeous colors and the wood chips can be used multiple times until exhausted.   This was one of my favorite dyes to use because of the wide range of colors it yielded.

Cochineal:  This is an insect.   Also very expensive these days.    When you buy it, you'll get a packet of dried grayish bugs.   Grind the bugs up to release the dye.    A little goes a very long way - we thought we were going to get medium shades of red and we got very very very dark shades.   This is a dyebath that will yield many exhaust baths, so prep lots of yarn. 

Logwood:   Another tree Haematoxylum campechianum  yields great color.  We were shooting for lavenders, but got lots of gray.    It's possible that we were using too much dye or the pH was wrong.     The alpaca in the photo above showed the best color variation for this dye.

Where to buy natural dyes?   A lot of these dyes can be found near you - collect them from the wild.  Remember to ask permission before you go into someone's field or yard to gather something. 

For the more exotic dyes you can get great natural dye kits and extracts from Earthues and dry dyestuff from  Dharma Trading Company.  

A couple of things to remember:

• Natural dyeing is not precise.    You won't get the same color twice.   That's why synthetic dyes were invented.   
• Natural dyeing is not necessarily safe or organic.   Stick to alum and tartaric acid or cream of tartar if you want safe mordants.   Wear gloves.
• Prep plenty of fiber so that you can exhaust the dyebath completely - you'll get a lot of shades that way. 
• Natural dyeing is a long process.  Give yourself plenty of time. 
• In order to get even color over your fiber, you'll need to stir.  However!  Stirring can cause felting with protein fibers so have a plan for gentle swishing and don't be surprised if the fibers come out streaky.   

Good luck!   And keep us posted on your own dye experiments.

Natural Dye - Indigo

We did our tenth natural dye sample set a couple of weeks ago.   This was the last dyestuff for our study group on natural dyes and we ended with a bang:   Indigo!

Ahhh, indigo.

The color of the sea and sky.   American fashion's great neutral. 

We had been reading for some time about different types of indigo vats and let me tell you, there's a lot of variation out there on how to do one.  

Indigo must be in an oxygen deficient dyebath if the color is to chemically adhere to the fiber.   This means that we had to dissolve the indigo into the water, then add a reduction agent to remove the oxygen.

For hundreds, if not thousands, of years, indigo vats were reduced with urine.   Apparently the urine of young boys and pregnant women is the preferred indigo vat urine.    Now you know. 

We decided to forgo the urine.   [Just thinking about it activates my gag reflex and everyone else's, too.  Ick.]

I had chunk indigo and another of us had instant indigo.   We decided to go with the instant indigo, but we had some RIT color remover on hand just in case we needed some reduction boost.

Instant indigo [available from many places] is made so that the indigo, which is already ground and easier to dissolve, is combined with a reduction agent.   All you have to do is put it in hot water and you're ready to go.    

We added a tablespoon of instant indigo to about 3 gallons of hot water in a bit stainless steel dyepot. 

This instant indigo was older and had already been used a bit.    The reduction agent was too weak to fully reduce the vat so we added a teaspoon of the RIT color remover.    It worked beautifully!

You can tell if an indigo pot is reduced enough by looking at the color of the water.   If it's green, it's reduced.   If it's aqua or blue, there's way too much oxygen in the vat and you need to reduce it. 

Stir carefully, disturbing the surface of the water as little as possible.   Lift and dunk your fiber carefully and slowly.  Keep the temp at about 120 degrees.  

Put your fiber in and leave it for 5 or 10 minutes.   Lift it carefully out of the water and hang it up.  You'll see the color develop fairly quickly.   

If you want a darker color, it's best to do several dips, rather than one long one.   One long dip often results in 'crocking'.   Crocked dye is dark, but rubs off very easily.   It's messy and hard to rinse because it keeps bleeding.  Don't go there!  Do multiple dips instead.  

Troubleshooting:   We'd love to be able to say that we followed all the directions and things turned out perfectly, but that's never the way it happens.  

This instant indigo had clumped and we didn't realize it wasn't dissolving right until we'd added a couple more tablespoons of it to get a reasonable amount of color in the water.    Since we were trying not to stir to energetically, we didn't notice the rather copious quantity of sediment on the bottom until we put in a test sample.    It came up covered with indigo bits.  

We've done bits before.   Bits are a pain.   We prefer to strain the bits out of the dye bath.   So we did.  

We lined a colander with polyester quilt batting and poured the entire dye pot through that to strain the bits out.   Then we put the bits in a jar and added boiling water to try to dissolve more of it.   That worked reasonably well and we got quite a bit more color, which we poured into the dyebath, but we still had lots of bits.   We saved them to dry and use again later.  

When we got the right amount of color in the water, we reduced it again and put our bigger sample bundles in.    

Beautiful, glorious color!   

This was one of the most fun natural dye experiments that we've done.