Hopi Red Amaranth Dye Efforts

I've been growing Hopi "red dye" amaranth for a long time here in coastal SC and GA.

Last September I was lucky to spot some on a trip to New Mexico, seen here in Rancho de Taos, lower right of the photo below, outside the mission church that was painted by Georgia O'Keefe in 1930.  It is next to another important plant for natives peoples, corn.

Red amaranth is a common foodstuff in many places. It seeds like crazy and always shows up in the yard or in a pot. I've only purchased seeds once, years ago.  It's a really beautiful plant, sometimes going a bit green. The flower heads are mostly seeds. I've been tempted to "harvest" the seeds for cooking, but I have not tried this yet as "winnowing" seems like a bit of work.

An online search shows that some people have success dyeing yarn with it.  I've tried multiple times. The key point is to NOT overheat, I did that once. Several times  since then I tried solar dyeing, once with some yarn/madder leaves in a closed jar...I left it several days in the hot sun and was rewarded with...no color.  I also tried this in a less smelly open container but this also failed. Despite our heat here in coastal SC and GA I think that it did not get hot enough.

I tried again this past September...I chopped an amount of leaves, stems, and seeds, you can see the color rubbing off on the cotton sheet that I gathered the leaves in

This attempt was to try a more controlled low heat on the stove, using a glass container in a water bath to extract color. I watched the temp carefully, keeping it at 140oF or a bit less. I should note that the pH of my tap water is a perfect 7...neutral. The yarn was premordanted in alum. 

THIS go round, I extracted a beautiful color...once I had my dye I poured it from the glass container into an aluminum pot,  continuing to carefully watch the temperature.

In they go, mohair and wool handspun

Result? a lovely warm tan shade. It simply won't take up the color, and perhaps I did not use enough dyestuff. 

I will try again, and if I have success, I will edit this post!

Saltillo Weaving

 This year, I visited Sante Fe. While there, I spied a weaving in a consignment shop that was familiar.  My Mom had purchased several weavings years ago, with a center diamond or lozange. I had always thought that they were Navaho but they were very finely done.  In this  consignment shop, I saw a weaving very like Mom's called a "saltillo." Here's one of Mom's

The fringe is made from the warp, whereas with Navajo weavings, if fringed, it is sewn on.  The weavings of Mom's have cotton warp and wool weft.  

A bit of research revealed that this weaving style originate in Saltillo, Mexico, in the state that is now Coahuila.  I suspect that these are indeed Mexican, due to the age (when Mom purchased in the 70's so hers are at least several decades older than that) and the discoloration from age seen in the cotton headers and footers of the weaving. 

 Here are the other two that Mom purchased. I learned that sometimes the colors of the Mexican flag are included (red, green, yellow). Ironically Mom, who has better seasonal decorating tendencies than I, would put them out for Christmas due to the red and green. 

The sett  (ends per inch) on the warps is about 12 on all.  

Here's the one in Sante Fe that clued me in:  the price is $325 (not that I care, all good weaving is priceless!). The ombre effect in the one below is similar to the weavings that Mom owns.

Indigo Dyeing (through the lens of high school chemistry )

A couple of years ago, I wanted to know more about what was happening with indigo "dyeing" (it's really using a pigment as it is not water soluble). I don't really buy the idea that it's "magic";  it is chemistry

(Here's a sample with shibori stitching technique done at Daufuskie Island a couple of years ago):

So, I did some research and thanks mostly to wikipedia came up with the following 

Indigo pigment is derived from indican, a compound found in leaves of various plants including Indigofera tinctoria, Indigofera suffruticosa, persicaria tinctoria (Japanese indigo) and isatis tinctoria (woad). The leaves of the indigo plant contain very small amounts of indican, 0.2 to 0.8 %.  

Indican is a colorless, water-soluble derivative of the amino acid tryptophan. Indican readily breaks down in water (“hydrolyzes”) to release β-D-glucose and indoxyl.

 

Plant leaves are soaked and fermented to produce the blue residue containing indigotin/indican. For shipping or forms of storage, the precipitate from this process is mixed with a strong base such as lye, pressed into cakes, dried and powdered.

 

Indigo is a challenging because it is not soluble in water (it cannot dissolve in water; this is why it is not a dye). To be dissolved, it must undergo a chemical change or “reduction” in which oxygen is removed from the water containing indigo powder. Reduction converts indigo into "white indigo" (leuco-indigo). When a submerged fabric is dipped in removed from the bath, the white indigo quickly combines with oxygen in the air (oxidizes, which is the opposite of reduction) and indoxyl reverts to the insoluble, intensely colored indigo left on the fabric (or paper).  Thus, what is dipped in the bath must be done so carefully in order to not introduce oxygen from the air into the bath.

And...there you go.

 

Saxon Blue Dye

I was rummaging through my collection of dyes in the garage and found some Saxon Blue in liquid form, which I've had for a few years. I went to the Botanical Colors website for some helpful tips. 

This is a dye which the Germans developed from indigo in the 1700's. Someone acidified it...as we know acid is a common feature of synthetic dyes.  (The company that is now BASF later developed a synthetic indigo, so they may have known that they were onto something with the acid thing...)

It is not a vat dye like indigo, so I pretreated my handspun yarn samples with a simmer in an aluminum acetate pot (with a tsp of AA) for an hour. I'm no longer using kitchen alum for mordanting but I don't know whether this makes a difference...another experiment to do...

Now, I don't like to measure so I didn't! But I have discovered using pH strips that my tap water is pH neutral.

I emptied the dye, about an ounce of liquid into warm water and dropped in my six small skeins

It simmered for an hour, but the yarns were still pale blue. BC suggested adding vinegar so into the pot went 1/2 c of distilled vinegar. In stand success! Here are the dried samples, some sheep's wool, some mohair. I've noticed in my dyeing practice that sheep's wool tends to take up more color.

Now, there was still some dye in the pot, so I decided to add two more small skeins and some bundles of osage orange shavings.  

 After an hour, the pot again required 1/2 cup of distilled vinegar.  Voilà again...a lovely grassy green!  The fabric holding the osage orange was also mordanted so I have some dyed fabric samples to give away too!

Dyeing with Cosmos

 I had a super crop of cosmos last year and saved and dried blossoms all summer. As they dry, they look more orange than yellow.

After this year's yellow sulfur cosmos crop, which was smaller, I decided that it was time to try. I had probably 3/4 cup of dried flowers and a couple ounces of mohair.  I don't have a photo here's one from Wikipedia

I added a few of  several types of coreopsis, some perennial and some that come up from seed (I do save seeds). I think this is tickseed, a perennial: 

And I tossed in a couple of these, maybe Dyer's Coreopsis also a perennial.

I used the method from Wildcraft Dyeing that I mentioned in my carrot top dyeing post.  I did not mess with the pH, it is whatever came out of the tap, and I have fairly hard water here at home. I used a couple of ounces of handspun mohair. Getting the color to "match"  (the photo to real life) is tough, I need to learn more about adjusting color and tone on the iphone to my subject. The lighter bottom two are the 2nd (exhaust) bath.

They go well with my carrot top green, which is kind of a celery green and does not look like that here

I do also use Cosmos for heat press prints

Earth Mineral "Dyeing"..pigments from the soil

My fiber guild had an earth mineral "dyeing" workshop.While I knew that "mud" was used to "dye" cloth in Africa,  until a talented artist joined the Guild.  had no idea that this was a "thing."  Sheryl guided us through the steps, including making our own mordant from soy beans (basically making your own soy milk!).

A brief review: a "dye" is soluble, i.e., it dissolves in water. "Pigments" are insoluble...they can be "suspended" in a medium, in this case soy milk. They need to be stirred before being applied to the fiber for even application, with each dip of the brush.

Here is Sheryl's website; she is a thoughtful and multitalented person. The fiber community is lucky to have her wisdom! : https://sherylstgermain.com/  

After making our soymilk and wetting down our pre scoured linen,  the earth mineral powders were mixed with more soymilk, and painted on the fabric. I'm not sure whether these pigments all came out of the ground, some I think were treated to make some of the less earthy colors...the "middle" stripe here was actually from Georgia clay that Sheryl had ground up.

Here is a link to the source for Sheryl's earth pigments. They have a multitude of uses, not just on fiber...https://www.earthpigments.com/ 

Dyeing with Safflower

This winter I have been playing with a basic method from wildcraftdyeing at youtube. I use scoured yarn (mine is handspun) and  then mordant by simmering with alum for an hour. 

Find some safflower at your local halal market for a pittance. I don't have any weights to recommend (weight of goods or "WOG") . 

 Put the safflower in a net and simmer a large glass container that is in a water bath...

Then,  simmer your yarn at a low simmer for an hour, this is wool. 

 

I was expecring a darker color...maybe orangey. But I am into yellow this year...