My friend Janet is messing with indigo in a big way, and I am going along. Here is some stuff that um...happened. I think that "indigo" is a catchall term for any plant that contains the indican molecule. Janet has both persicaria tinctoria and indigo suffruticosa in her garden.
So, Janet put some "Japanese indigo," persicaria tinctoria, (out of her garden) in the blender with some ice, and dunked some wool in. Now, I should add that while I like dark "indigo" blue, I am a bigger fan of green.
I took this (unreduced) minivat of green slush home and put some combed merino top in it. What did I get? Chlorophyll coloring I suspect, although it has a blue tinge. It is a pale minty color. I am waiting for it to fade. I love it.
Then yesterday, I went over to Janet's place which is dubbed "Camp Janet." (Camp Janet involves a major wonderful fiber-and-dye studio).
I decided to try some hammering. I've always thought that this was a great activity for children and not for me, so of course here I go... In the photo below, in the oval, is the hammered tinctoria...it did not transfer much. However, the suffruticosa hammered beautifully. In the bottom part of the photo, you can my experiment to dip the linen in a rust and water bath but the print came out less defined because it was wet; however the iron did not change the color (bottom of the photo). (The dark brown red colors are flower petals.)
And then, Janet put up with me asking her to simmer some of the indigo suffruticosa without reduction. This allowed me to put in a roll of paper, leaves, and linen to simmer. (Yeah botanical printing of a sort which basically means MY sort).
As you can see below there is green around the border that survived the simmer. The photo shows linen above and watercolor paper below. The green turned out gray-green on the paper. This print included my favorite sumac leaves, rhus copilinum. With a nasty smudge of coreopsis that turned rather bloody looking (but of course looks better on the paper...)
