Madder

A word about madder-- No two recipes for madder are the same. I went through a pile of books, including Jenny Dean's Wild Color, Rita Buchanan's A Dyer's Garden, and J.N. Liles The Art and Craft of Natural Dyeing, notes from my instructors at MICA, and Earthguild's recipes on their website... All very different on ratio's of dyestuff to fiber and cooking times. The only things they agreed on were that dried madder must be soaked before using, and that it is a low heat process-- it must never boil, only a low simmer can be used. Jenny Dean's The Craft of Natural Dyeing suggested some modifiers and after mordants that would change the color to xyz.

Here's what I managed to synthesize down from all this information:

Sample Sized Madder Recipe

Ratio unsure, working from 3oz of Madder roots over the course of 6 different dyes.

To begin, you must chop your madder into small pieces. Pour hot water over the roots and let them soak 48 hours to leech out the color. Add a 1/2 tsp to make the bath alkaline, as this gives truer reds. While the roots are steeping, add a sample of cotton (with tin if you have it) and a sample of wool.After 48 hours is up, remove two samples and let dry. The wool should be an orangy-red and the cotton peach.


Add 1oz of samples-- 7 wool with alum, 7 silk with alum, 2 cotton with alum, and 1 cotton with alum and soymilk. Cook with the roots still in the pot at a simmer 20 minutes. Remove samples, rinse and hang dry. This is where I got the truest reds.


Add 3oz wool and silk, mordanted with Alum and Cream of Tarter, to the hot madder bath, with the roots still in it. Leave sit one hour stirring occasionally.

Remove silk (1oz in my bath-- comes out a peachy coral color) and add 4oz cotton. Dissolve 2 tsp tannic acid in the dye bath (the wool instantly became brighter) and add a little more water so the yarn moves around freely. Simmer 30minutes and remove wool. Let cool before rinsing out. This wool was a light raspberry/dark coral color.


Add samples of wool, silk, soymilked cotton to the dye bath (still containing the 4oz cotton-- it should be a peach color now). Add 2 tbsp vinegar and 1 tbsp lemon juice to push the vat from an alkaline to an acid (I read this gives oranges rather than reds, so I said what the hell lets try it). Simmer 1 hour and leave sit for 12-24 hours. As a bit of an afterthought, I added a piece of shibori'd silk to the exhaust bath and let it absorb and cool with everything else. The cottons came out mauve, the soymilked cotton purple, the silk brown, the wools red-orange.


I have yet to do all the after mordants and modifying-- I'm waiting until all my dyeing is finished and I can do everything at once (otherwise the baths are too small and I'll just be wasting my chemicals/needlessly putting myself at risk of fumes, ect more than once.