Yesterday we died with red cabbage as a group project, and it smelled awful! We each picked a mordant to mix with our boiled cabbage to produce a dye bath. I picked aluminum and Baking soda to make 2 separate dyes. Everyone else did the same with copper, iron, nickle, cabbage solo, cream of tarter, and I am for getting one... We got every pastel color in the rainbow, but the colors were not very brilliant. So we left samples in each dye over night to see if we could get stronger color. But from what I hear, cabbage is a very unstable dye and wont much color, or keep it on the fiber for very long. 

Carmine

Carmine or cochineal bugs produce a deep and vibrant, shades of red. Currently Peru is the leading provider in harvesting these bugs. They prefer a warm claimant like Peru or Mexico and usually nest on cactus. The red is found not just in Natural dyed fibers, but also in red food dye, such as cake icings or drinks, and it can also be found in red lipsticks.

The color that Carmine can produce can vary from a number of different ways the dye is prepared. One way to create a more intense red is to add cream of tater sauce. Carmine reacts to the tarter sauce's acid by producing a brilliant red.

Today created 4 dye bathes out of onion skins, red clover, blueberries, and strawberries. To prepare the bath for the onion skins and clover I poured boiling water, and let them steep for an hour. The blueberries and strawberries were crushed and then mixed with warm water, and gradually brought to a simmer. I pre-mordant my swatches yesterday, but I bought some new fabric so i deiced to pre-mordant swatches for that as well, in the iron, copper, and aluminum, to see if there was any difference from silk to silk. The silk I had been dyeing with yesterday was very light weight, the silk I brought today was heavy and textured. I made 24 swatches by the end of the day, and left another 24 swatches to sit in the 4 bathes over night.

I prepared 6 dye baths last Friday which consisted of materials that I found in my neighborhood. Maple, Elm, Burch and oak bark,  Willow leaves and twigs, and a number of different purple flowers that I combined into one bath.  The bark I am letting sit in cold water for a week before dyeing any fibers. The Willow leaves and twigs as well as the flowers I poured boiling water over and let steep for the weekend and then came back to it on  Monday.

Today (Monday) I pre-mordant my silk swatches in iron, copper, and aluminum before placing in the dye bath. While the swatches were in the mordant I prepared the dye bath by first straining out the leaves, twigs, and petals. I decided to make a 3rd dye bath from the extra maple and elm bark I had collected and brought that to a light simmer, the flowers dye was also brought to a light simmer, while the willow was left cold. I collected 12 samples in colors ranging from golden champagne to a smoky dark grey. 

Oak Bark

Oak Bark

Oak Bark contains very high tanning levels which makes it perfect for tanning animal skins and dying cellulose fibers.

North American Oak Bark gives a yellow color to the dye bath, while Mediterranean oak bark can give off shades of red.

Black oak bark was first introduced to England from Wilmington Delaware. 

When Black Oak Bark is allowed to sit and soak for two years it can be used as a mordant.

http://www.nativetech.org/quill/dyes.html

http://www.renaissancedyeing.com/store_dye-extracts_oak/

 

Indigo 6/18/09

Indigo Lab 6/18/09

Ingredients for Indigo

1tsp Indigo

2tsp Thoreau Dioxide

1cup Ammonia

After gently mixing together ingredients as to not introduce to much oxygen, we damped our sample cotton swatches and then dipped in the indigo. Then we let stand for class tomorrow.

 

Mediterranean Sea Holly - Spain

Star of Persia - Turkestan 

Meadow Sage - World Wide

Burnet - Native

Ornamental Onion - Asia Minor

 

I didn't find too much about these plants and natural dye, I mostly came across Easter Egg natural dye recipes, when I typed in Star of Persia, Meadow Sage, and Ornamental Onion. But I think those recipes were referring to Persian rug dying techniques, onion skins, and looking to meadows for wild flowers. 

Selective Dying

Last semester in Marianne Fairbanks's Evolutionary Fibers course we did a number of different techniques to design and/or enhance our natural dye samples. We were working with natural dyes but already in powder form that was purchased from a company that is slips my mind at the moment. Some of the techniques we used were tying and bunching the fabric to a bottle, tying, gathering and stitching the fabric together very tightly. We also used bee's wax to shield part of the fabric from the dye, while exposing others. You can scratch away the wax, partially dip it, crinkle or fold it. I have some photos of that process I can post. I can also see if I can figure out how to post some of her hand outs on the portal so you all can get a better idea on how each technique works.