Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Dye Day 2010

In 1973, when our first child was just a wee babe, I was in the Martinsville, Indiana, I ran across the book The Joy of Spinning by Marilyn Kluger. I took it home and read it and said to myself, "SOMEDAY I am going to learn how to do that! 5 years later I met a new friend and she mentioned that she knew how to spin wool into yarn. I nearly grabbed her by the lapels and said, "Oh! Will you teach me???" And she did. One thing led to another and I started doing dyeing using plant materials. For a while, I was a member of a spinning guild (by the way, blogger is underlining these words and I can't seem to make it stop.) Each year, in the fall, we would have an outdoor dyeing day, and it was so much fun. A friend and I were going to do that this year, but we are under a burning ban right now because the weather has been so dry. So, we decided to have an INDOOR dyeing day. Here is my sack of unwashed wool fleece. I decided to wash 1 pound of it last night. It is best to dye clean, wet, wool, so when I got done, I just put it in a plastic bag to save for this morning.



My method is as follows: I can do 1 pound of wool at a time in my kitchen sink, so that is what I did. I filled the sink with hot tap water and added enough dish detergent to make the water slippery, then I added the wool and let it soak for 15 minutes:



Gently squeeze the water through the wool, and then gently transfer it to a colander. Here is the dirty water after I removed the wool:



To the second rinse, I added 1/2 cup vinegar. Be sure to handle the wool very gently and never shock it by changing the temperature of the water suddenly. Here it is in its second rinse:



And here is the 4th rinse. You can see that the water is not absolutely clear, but good enough:



On to this morning ~ On the right you can see my large stainless steel pan. I put 4 gallons of soft water in there with a scant 1/2 cup of alum (this is NOT the kind of alum you make pickles with) and 2 Tablespoons of cream of tartar. I added the clean, wet, wool, brought it up to a boil and reduced the heat and simmered it for 1 hour. Then I drained it in the colander and it was ready for dyeing. That process is called a mordant. It makes the fiber accept the dyes.



Here is the marigold dye bath being cooked. We covered marigold blossoms with soft water and simmered them for about 1 hour, then strained out the dye liquor and put it back in the pot:



Here is the goldenrod flower dye bath cooking. The method is the same:



My friend brought poke berries! I cooked them, covered with vinegar, simmering for about an hour, and then strained out the berries. (There is no need to pre-mordant the wool for the poke berry/vinegar dye method.) Here is the wool, cooking in the dye bath:



Here you can see I put the big colander into a stainless bowl and drained the goldenrod dye bath before cooking wool in it:



Here is the wool in the goldenrod dye bath. Simmer for 1 hour, then strain:



Here is my friend with the wool we dyed with poke berries:



On the picnic table, you can see all the different wools:



Goldenrod yellow:



Marigold yellow:



Onion skin yellow:



Poke berry red:



The poke berry wool needs to dry in the shade. The color will fade, but even then it is still pretty. The yellows will not fade. I have managed to make lavender and a sort of green before with different plants, but this is all we had today.

It was a beautiful and very enjoyable day!

I am sharing this post over at Wardeh's "Simple Lives Thursday!"

9 comments:

  1. Oh that looks lik eyou had so much fun! I miss doing that. I should pick some poke berries and do some of the wool you gave me. Where do you get your Alum for the mordant?

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  2. We did have fun. :) The mordant chemicals I have came from : http://www.earthguild.com/level2/maps.htm

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  3. Beautiful colors from nature. What a delightful morning spent with a friend. Can't wait to see what you use the fibers for.

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  4. Increible! So glad you linked this post to Simple Lives Thursday. Thanks a lot for this very educational entry.

    Muchas gracias!

    Mely

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  5. This is so cool! I've always wanted to dye something with food. I'm so glad you linked in to Simple Lives Thursday as well - have fun with your wool!

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  6. SE, I started out with the information in that book by Marilyn Kloger I mentioned, but eventually bought this book: http://www.amazon.com/Natures-colors-plants-Ida-Grae/dp/0025449508/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1285930258&sr=1-1 It is out of print, now, but Amazon.com has several used copies listed at quite a low price. Although the lady who wrote it lives in the Southwest, and I am in the Midwest, it was still VERY useful to me as an education and also as a source of recipes. When I dye, I am not at all scientific about it. I follow a recipe for the mordant, but other than that, I just dye however much wool fits nicely into the dye bath and never weigh the wool for that. If there is a lot of dye left in the water, I sometimes will do another batch with it, and it will make a lighter color. I actually did that with the poke berries this time, and it turned out nicely. I hope you will get to try natural dyeing sometime!

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