Dyeing with Japanese indigo

 This time, belatedly,  yes, another natural dye post.

I had in my possession some Japanese indigo seeds, persicaria tinctoria.  They look like another persicaria that I have met on my travels looking at plants. These made pretty little plants.  I grew them in pots.   I used them for dye before flowering (not recommended) because leaves were going brown here in the Georgia heat. The leaves had blue bruises so I thought it was time. I collected just leaves.

I used an internet recipe which I can't locate but there are a number out there...I chopped it up in the blender and added ice in a bucket. Salt was involved. I had my usual several small skeins of handspun wool and handspun mohair. It was a cold business...

There was a lot of rinsing to do with the little plant bits...

I'm sure that there are people who can replicate colors from photos online,  Pas moi. However these are lovely celadony blue-greens. 

I moved the plants to the ground afterwards. Word to the wise: the deer really like them.

Dyeing with Black Knight Scabiosa

 When I was in Gallup briefly this year,  some friends and I wandered iinto a yarn store that I spied around the corner from Perry Null Trading Post, where we were SUPPOSED to be. (Don't worry, we got there...) I wish I could find the name of the store. The owner had small bags of dyeing materials including black knight scabiosa, from Bluebirddyegardens.com.  (Check out the website... Blue Bird is in Southwest Colorado and grows, dries, and markets dyestuff as well as having workshops. I haven't been there...yet).

Back at home, I tried out the Black Knight Scabiosa, such cute little dried flowers...I'll try growing them next year.  It is an annual.

I mordanted some handspun wool and angora mohair with an alum bath.  I guess I was expecting a purple but no...here we go with a lovely mossy green!  I didn't know of any natural dyes that of themselves go green.  It's so hard to get accurate color, I had to play around with the tint on my phone. Samples are mossier and warmer than seen here, but it's not too far off. the wool (on the left) is a deeper and mossier a color than the mohair. (It's also better spun!)

I like doing small batch dyeing, and apparently spinning. I don't have the patience to spin for a large project but I do love spinning for small batches for baby knitting or tapestry weaving.  I wind up with lots of colors that I can use together. 

Dyeing Yarn with Clay

 Last year I went to a workshop where we dyed linen with different colors of clay which are commercially available and also used for things like frescos. A bit after that, my house needed some foundation work done and some very clay-ey stuff emerged along with dirt.  And I thought...why not try with yarn?

First of all, my Georgia clay (I'm in Chatham County near the ocean) is a tan-brown color, not red. Thanks to youtube, I learned how to extract clay from dirt. I know that this is how some people harvest clay for pottery and such. First I tried making some little shapes with holes...warp weight potential?

Next I tried cotton and wool yarns. I soaked the yarns in soy milk to mordant them for a good 48 hours first. I mixed clay with a good bit of soy milk to get a thick paste, and wedged a small skein in between slabs of clay/soy. I put it in the fridge in a container for a couple of days.

Left, sheep's wool, right, cotton, both handspun. My samples needed quite a bit of rinsing and are still stiff, especially the cotton. There is still a good bit of clay in there. Compared to using clay on linen, the linen also stiffened but it took the color better, and I think that the cotton, as a cellulose fiber, took the color better. II think that I wiill be more apt to use my clay for modeling rather than dyeing! But it is a rather nice novelty and I'll probably weave with my samples.

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!

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

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...

More small batch dyeing: annatto and sappanwood dyeing on wool

 More small batch dyeing probably for tapestry...the three on the left are annatto, sourced at Al Madinneh Halal Market here in Savannah, dark pink is sappanwood, next is annatto overdyed with sappanwood, far right is the end of the sappanwood dyepot, it went purply at the end! All are handspun wool, the roving was gift from Her Majesty Margo!

All except the overdyed one were premordanted in alum...

Carrot Top Dyeing

 I have figured out that my favorite natural dyeing is with materials from my yard/garden or the grocery store.  Last week, I came upon a youtube channel that changed my approach, both to how and what I dye. 

I had not tried carrot tops before. The vid that I was watching promised oranges. I got lovely greens. I followed directions, although I am the first to admit that I am BAD at weighing dyestuff and fiber, perhaps that's why I got greens...I will work to improve!

Here are some photos from my process, but I will leave it to you to view the youtube link below for specific directions!

Below is a large glass "pickle" jar in a "bain marie."  A paint strainer is used to hold the dyestuff. I love this method as the glass jar allows me to see what is going on inside. Watching color seep into the water is a large part of the fun for me. I will be trying this method with other dyestuffs. The glass jar also allows one to watch the color seep into the yarn or fiber once it is added.

The dye stuff  (in this case carrot tops)  simmers for an hour. Then, alum mordanted yarn is added to the glass dyepot, and simmered for an hour, then left to cool overnight. I was expecting orange but got a lovely green. (I love both colors so I did not care...)

here is the video link: thanks to https://wildcraftdyeing.com/.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rs7FELt0NM4&t=240s

Update, 6/24:  I was lucky to find a bunch of carrots at the farmer's market and decided to try again this month, in part to be sure that they did not go orange, here is the result: 

No indeed, still green which is good, I love greens. The top 2 are mohair, the bottom one I think is polypay. All my handspun.

I have been trying to cultivate Queen Anne's Lace in a pot to no avail. I had a carrot come up by chance and so I did not pick it and it flowered. This may be the only version of the daucus family that I get to enjoy here in Savannah, not too unhappy, though...

A Local Shawl

Here's a shawl of which I'm quite proud. The yarn came from a Cormo sheep at Pat Cook's farm, Four Arches. She has a lovely  B and B and I would recommend it if you want a stay in beautiful rural Pembroke Georgia! Pat's flock of sheep and others is kind of a rescue operation, making it even more special!

The yarn was dyed with two different dyes and one pigment. The dyes were madder for the pink color, and osage orange for the mustard shade. Indigo is not a dye, it is a pigment because is in insoluble in water and forms a physical and not a chemical bond with what is dyed.

The pattern I used is Muirburn by Anne Hansen, a variation on a Scottish hap shawl.  I have been a fan of Anne's lace patterns for a long time. 

Natural Dyed Wool: Coreopsis with some Carrot tops thrown in...

A friend of a friend was given some yarn by a wise (that means old enough to know something) lady, in her 90's.  This wise woman at some point  had attended a dyeing seminar or workshop. The wise lady gave the yarn to the friend who was not a wool person, who then gave it to my friend J, a wool person. All the samples were labelled. As wool goes, they are a wee bit brittle and aged. I have no idea when this dyeing happened. 

At any rate, J brought the samples to my house. I excitedly photo'd them all with my phone. Months later I've gotten around to making a photo collage at some miscellaneous website. 

You will have difficulty reading the labels so here are the dyes and modifiers, left to right and top to bottom
1) Coreopsis, alum, iron, sodium carbonate
2) Coreopsis, sodium carbonate, no mordant
3) Coreopsis, alum, sodium carbonate
4) Alum, carrot tops
5) Coreopsis, chrome, iron, sodium carbonate
6) Coreopsis, alum, iron
7)  Coreopsis, alum
8) Coreopsis, chrome, iron
9) Coreopsis, chrome, sodium bicarbonate

Of course, the color representation is likely inaccurate on your moniter/my phone, etc etc, plus the colors are likely faded after some years.  

There was another sample...wonder if it was more carrot tops.  It's my favorite, and it is labelled "Candide," one of the first wool yarns that I spent much time knitting, long ago...

Natural dyeing...

Well,  this natural dyeing is a favorite sport of mine in the last several years...here are some recent photos: osage orange, no premordant I believe...

Cochineal (which I unfortunately overdyed and it turned muddy, oh well...), the above photo'd osage orange, osage orange overdyed with indigo...and indigo....love them!

Results from a madder workshop I lead together with my guild:  premordanted with alum, no mordant, and premordanted with iron.  The latter is a lovely purple that you can't really see...results are very different from the workshop at SAFF I attended...  

these lovely muted shades were from the end of the almost exhausted dyepots...madder and iron...but the fibers hand't been premordanted, just dipped in the dedicated dyepots so obviously there was mordant materials in the water

 I just love this....

Madder workshop at SAFF

I went to SAFF, the Southeastern Animal Fiber Fest, at the end of October. It was Hallowe'en weekend, well timed. There were some costumes on view.

A highlight of the weekend was a madder workshop put on by Jackie of Forage Color.

The process was outlined in this book, and actually is illustrated on the cover:

We each had 20 samples, a generous 90 yards each. We used a superwash merino. Apparently the superwash takes dye well. Jackie dyed them all together, with us helping and a couple of guys serving as "water bearers." 

There were four pre dyeing options: no mordant, alum, copper, and iron.  Jackie had done the mordanting ahead of time. 

We used a different madder dyepot, heated to 160 then left to cool,  for each pre dyeing option so as not to "muddy" the results. 

Skeins soaked for an hour and then were removed. At this point there was lots of labelling going on to identify which treatment each skein got.

Skeins were then looking lovely but there was another step: an afterbath:  each of the four predyed options was then "separated" into another five options:  no after bath, an alkaline afterbath, an acidic afterbath, or another dip in alum or iron.  

Here Jackie tests the acidity and alkalinity of those two afterbath options

They were left to soak for an hour. 

There was then a really good rinse, and thus, we had 20 different shades.   

 Jackie had some dyekits for sale and I took advantage!

 Lovely Hallowe'eny colors!