Island Day #4

First of the dyes today!!!!! I can't still can't quite believe that someone liked what I do enough to give me this time to work. This is the only way to the amount of dyeing that I want to do, to have the time it requires.

First of the day (after refilling my propane tank) was Annato Seed. The great thing about Annato is you can find it easily in bulk at any Hispanic/Latina grocery store (otherwise called a Supermercado!)

The Recipe for Annato:

1:2 Ratio dyestuff to fiber, though I suspect you could get the same color intensity if you did a 1:3 ratio... Put your seeds in a muslin bag and tie it shut. Make sure you include the weight of the bag in your fiber calculation. (I ended up soaking my seeds overnight because I ran out of propane, however this is not necessary.) Simmer seeds in water about an hour. Leave the bag of seeds in dye water for stronger color, rather than straining. Add 2 tsp washing soda. Simmer fibers in dyebath 1 hour. Leave in bath to cool. This will give you a lovely yellow-orange color.

Annato before washing out:


Second of the day was Osage Orange.

The Recipe for Osage Orange:

Ratio: .75 material : 1 fiber
Soak sawdust overnight in enough water to move fiber freely. Simmer for 40 min to extract all the color. Strain out the sawdust. Add a 1/4 cup salt. Add wetted fibers and simmer for 45min. Let the fibers cool in the dye water before washing out. The colors range from pale yellows to bright yellows to a sage-moss green on a naturally grey wool. The spent dye bath can be used again for lighter colors, which I am doing. I shibori'd a piece of wool and a piece of silk and am leaving them in the bath overnight without cooking. Last I checked, they have a beautiful pastel yellow color!

Osage on silk!




The third dye of the day was actually a two part-- Brazilwood.

The Recipe for Brazilwood:

As far as I've read, brazilwood can be used for two dye baths before it exhausts. This dye is highly sensitive to PH of water—needs to be more basic/alkaline for reds and plums (add 1tsp washing soda to the vat) for a ph11. For oranges and yellows, add vinegar to make it more acidic (ph3). To test the ph, you'll need litmus strips. 1:1 ratio dyestuffs to fiber. I began with an alkaline bath because it gets the more difficult to obtain colors.

1st dye: Pour boiling water over brazilwood. Add washing soda as needed. Allow to sit overnight (aprox 24hrs). Add fibers, cook 1 hour at a simmer. Strain off half of the first dyebath and rinse the fibers.

2nd dye: Add water to get the desired water level in the pot. This time, add vinegar to make it more acidic. Add fiber, in a ratio of 1:.75 this time, and simmer with the chips 1 hour. Let sit overnight to cool and brighten the colors. *note* My fibers are still sitting at this moment for the second dye... Last look made me wonder if they were going to be as orange as promised. We shall see...

On the line after I was finished:


All my dyeing today was done on alum mordanted fibers. I added enough sample pieces of wool and silk to be able to test each of these with Iron, Copper, acid, base, chrome, tin, ect after mordants and modifiers. At the very least with the copper and the iron. However, I'm waiting until I've got a bunch of samples before I do either of those baths, so those results will come in later.

Island Day #4

Note to self: Naturally grey yarns do not dye well with yellow-orange colors. No matter how much I beg and plead.

this means that that pile of grey wool is gonna need to be put towards the red baths.... ughn.

Island Day #3

So I seem to have a head cold, graciously given to my by one of my oldest friends. Because of this, the day trip I had planned to Bellaire, MI to wander on the beach on one of the lakes was postponed. Instead, I bought some tylenol cold and flu, some Emergency, and some throat lozenges and sat on the porch to do some more mordanting. And research.

I LOVE research. And since I've never used any of the commercial dyes I brought with me, I thought it might be a good idea. Of course I began with one of the more involved ones-- Madder. After 2 hours and having compiled about 10 recipes plus modifiers I was still no closer to understanding what the best course of action was. Or the weight to dye ratio (because every one was different). Even after having slept on it last night, still haven't decided. But, since all the recipes agreed that it needed to soak for 12-48 hours, it's soaking.

I also looked up the recipe for brazilwood and have it soaking right now. It's a much simpler one, I believe. I had this awesomely cool moment yesterday because all the recipes said brazilwood gives the reddest reds when it's at a ph11. So I had to change the acidity of the water.... which btw, the water here is a ph6, so really neutral. What makes things more alkaline? Washing soda is the answer! It's chemical name is sodium carbonate (also known by chemical dyers as Soda Ash). 1tsp was all that was required to make the bath a ph11 and I was so excited I called my mom. She was nonplussed. I still think it's really cool.

Other things on the immediate agenda that I found recipes for:
Osage Orange (sawdust version)
Annato Seeds
Bracken Ferns (because this is a prehistoric forest full of them)
Goldenrod (there is some early goldenrod growing along the sides of the highway, which I will totally be stopping to snag as I see fit).
Birch leaves and bark (because there are so many of them, much like the ferns)
Safflower-- I bought some at the sheep and wool fest a while back. I read that you can get a yellow bath from it, then use it again to get pink!
Cochineal
Marigolds (I have some frozen from home in the freezer)
Gladiolus (I have a bouquet of these, chopped into pieces and frozen... It was from my girlfriend. She thought they'd be pretty and useful! Amazing.)

Potato Starch Resist

In case anyone is interested, I also have a recipe for a potato starch resist, a little simpler than the potato dextrin resist.

Potato-starch Resist
This recipe can be doubled or quadrupled. I was able to cover about half a yard of fabric with this amount.
2 3/4 cups water
1 cup instant mashed potato flakes
1 1/2 Tablespoons of liquid starch (the stuff in the laundry section of the grocery store)

Bring the water to boil in a large saucepan. Add the potato flakes and turn heat down to medium or low. Cook, stirring by hand with a large spoon, for 5 minutes. Remove from heat, transfer from your kitchen pot to a small bucket (I use paint containers from my local hardware store). Return your pot and spoon to the kitchen. Add liquid starch to the bucket, stirring by hand with a large whisk (do NOT use this whisk in your kitchen anymore after it's been used for art work). The mixture should be very smooth. Let the mixture cool, then spread it on the fabric. I put a piece of plastic wrap on the potatoes while they cool so that they don't dry out and get crusty on top. I used wide plastic putty knives to spread the starch. The thinner the layer of resist, the finer the network of lines you will get with the dye.

Island Day #3: Tapioca Resist part 1

So in researching natural resists, I found an article maintaining that Instant Tapioca can be used as a resist. Why, you might ask, would this work? Or better yet, Why would anybody look at box of Instant Tapioca and be like Yeah I could resist some dye with that! In fact, Tapioca comes from the root of the cassava (yuca) plant, which was traditionally ground into a paste and used alternately as a resist and as a medium for dye paste. Yay South America! The cassava/yuca is also the #2 food staple carbohydrate for Central and South America (kinda like a potato). In theory, Instant Tapioca is a MUCH CHEAPER version of a potato dextrin resist. And what do you do with theories!? You test them of course!

Because I'm going to natural dye these suckers, I first had to mordant my fabrics! I have a sample of silk, of wool, and of cotton. The cotton is a basic alum mordant. The wool and silk are alum with a cream of tarter modifier.


Pin the fabric down on top of a piece of plastic (a black garbage bag cut open will work just fine). I used push pins and pushed into the wooden picnic table on the back porch. That way when your sticky tapioca is being pushed around on the fabric, the fabric doesn't go anywhere.


I made the instant tapioca-- 2cups of hot water per 6tbsp instant tapioca for each 1/2 yard of fabric. Add water to a large bowl, add tapioca to water and whisk while you do it....or it gets clumpy and gross. Let it sit 10min. Then I proceed to use a wooden spoon to spread it onto the fabric so that the entire fabric has soaked it up (no dry spots!!). Because the fabric has been rinsed completely (I totally did that in the washer and dryer), and tapioca is a food, you can use foodsafe stuff! Yay! (this is good cuz all my dye pots and containers that were big enough currently have dyestuffs soaking in them....) Then you leave it where it is, pinned and all, until it's dry. Mine dried pretty much overnight, but I probably won't move it until later this afternoon, because I just don't need the table for anything else at the moment. When they're almost completely dry, hang them up on a clothesline to finish drying.







I'll put up a part 2 once I've colored them.

ISLAND Hill House Residency, Day 2

Currently up in northern Michigan at the ISLAND Hill House, for a 2 week residency where I have all the time in the world for natural dyeing and cut paper!!!

For more info on ISLAND (The Institute for Sustainable Living, Art, & Natural Design), go here: http://www.artmeetsearth.org/



I'm in a beautiful log cabin in Mancelona MI, in the middle of the forest, with a dirt road leading up to the place.... It's like being in a prehistoric forest here, everything is so lush and moist and there are more ferns than I have ever seen in my life! I've settled in, claimed my space, skyped my girlfriend, and have begun mordanting! Only issue so far...found a giant bug in my sink. Had to drown it before removing it from the house. Ewwies.


Prehistoric!!

On the topic of mordants:
I've been reading about cold mordants for cellulose fibers. For a lb of fiber, it's 3 slow baths: a 3oz Alum for 12-24hrs, a 2tbsp tannic acid for 12-24hrs, and another 3oz Alum for 12-24 hrs. I put the first alum pot together last night around 5pm, rinsed it and begun the tannic acid pot at 1pm this afternoon. I think that means I'll start the next alum pot first thing tomorrow morning. If this works like it's supposed to, it will save a hella lot of energy and fuel (always good). All I'll have to do is plan ahead...haha.



I've completed my first Alum/Cream of Tarter mordant on a pound of wool/silk. It's now line drying! I've got a pot of silk and wool yardage for stenciling on cooking as I am writing this (I'm going to turn the picnic table into a print table). I brought the monogum with me for making the dye paste, and I think I'm going to try some highly concentrated dye baths in my small pot for coloring.

Of course the next step after getting things mordanted will be to start dyeing! I went out for a walk this morning and collected Queen Ann's Lace (to add to the carrot tops graciously left in my fridge), and some thistles. No idea what the thistles will do, but I figure what the hell, why not? I will definitely be testing the ferns in the area, I read somewhere that ferns give a rusty color?

As for flowers, there aren't many...... And there's a bunch of weeds I've never seen before (which I took pictures of and will be googling before I go out and pick them bare handed). I'll save them for later this week. There were plenty of roadside flower plants on my way up here, I'm going to have to go back for some of them (I think I saw some purple loostrife at one point). Lots of black eyed susans (practically useless) and hopefully some sunflowers.



I came up here with all the purchasable dyestuffs I've collected over the last 2 years-- Cochineal, Indigo (for the workshop in August), Osage orange, annato, madder, sandlewood, brazilwood, logwood, cutch, and some others, as well as dried dyestuffs like onion skins, nettles, dandelion, yarrow, st johns wart, turmeric, hybiscus. The ones I haven't tried before will be the first to be done. I'm planning to do full swatch testing of everything, beginning with the dyestuffs I haven't used before, which means I'll be getting out the copper and iron after-mordants at some point.

I believe that's it for this moment. Will probably need to do a thiox bath for the pound of weaving cotton I turned into skeins last night... ugh. At least I'll be outside when I do it.