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.