The Sitting Tree

I have to share one of my favorite blogs.  Elizabeth from The Sitting Tree always has wonderful posts and a wealth of information.... You should check it out, she's been recently posting about her experience with natural dyes...
The Sitting Tree

Dyer's Coreopsis part 1

Coreopsis seedlings

Getting bigger!

Coreopsis tinctoria, otherwise known as dyers coreopsis, is a lovely little annual plant with rangy foliage and tons and tons of little yellow flowers with deep red centers.  I started mine from seed in early June and by mid August the plants were knee high and full of flowers.  Every time I pick the plants clean, the plants are full again in 2 days!

All grown up and towering over the marigolds in my dye garden

So here is my first natural dyeing experiment:

Ingredients:

• small handful of 100% wool yarn and a 3" x 3" square of 55% hemp/ 45% organic cotton fabric, premordanted with 15% alum = 25 grams
• 25 g Coreopsis tinctoria flowers
• water
• small stainless steel sauce pan and a small cast iron sauce pan

Picked 25g of coreopsis flowers and steeped them in the sun in 4 cups of water for 6 hours (like sun tea!)

I allowed the coreopsis tea to sit over night to make sure all the pigment was extracted

Then I simmered the flowers for 30 minutes in a stainless steel pan

I took half the dye concentrate and added it to a cast iron pan and added about a cup of water to each, then simmered for an hour.  Iron is typically used to "sadden" colors in natural dyeing.

100% Wool yarn and a small 3"x 3" square of organic cotton/hemp fabric dyed in the stainless steel pan

100% wool yarn and hemp/organic cotton fabric dyed in the cast iron pan.  I don't know if I'd call this "sad" but it definitely altered the color to a more green bronze.

This was really fun.  I cannot wait to try more plants.  I have to admit I didn't expect the colors to be so vibrant.  I think for the next batch, I'll wind off larger skeins of yarn.  Also, after reading through all the books in the previous post, I don't need to use so much Alum to be an effective mordant.  Next time I'll do 8% as suggested in Wild Color.  Next up, Coreopsis part II!

A bookish post

I think I've checked out every book on natural dyeing available to me from my local library.  Some are amazing, some are okay, but all have a large quantity of information.  Here's my list of references and a little review of each:

A Weavers Garden: Growing Plants for Natural Dyes and Fibers by Rita Buchanan (1999)
      -A nice in depth book including some history on each plant.  Has  a good section on bark too.  I like this one for the horticultural information on actually growing the plants.  Some extras in this book include a section on soap plants for naturally cleaning your fibers and a section on fragrant plants to scent and protect textiles.  There is also a nice little chapter at the end on how to design your dye garden and suggested plant pairings.

A Dyers Garden:  From Plant To Pot Growing Dyes for Natural Fibers by Rita Buchanan  (1995)
     -Same author as the previous book and this has much of the same info but in a more concise list type format.  I really like this book because it has many of the plants I chose for my dye project.  Along the sides of the pages are photographic examples of the different dye and mordant combinations on samples of fibers

The Handbook of Natural Plant Dyes by Sasha Duerr
     - There is a good section on finding dye stuffs right from your own kitchen and how you can compost them when you are done.  I love composting :)  This book seems to have a lot of good info on plants I haven't seen in the other books such as olive tree and red maple leaf dyes.  It also has a lovely philosophy on slow textiles (akin to the Slow Food movement).  I love that she acknowledges the need to slow life down, appreciate nature, community, and family. 

Natural Dyes by Judy Hardman and Sally Pinhey
      -I liked this book for the sheer quantity of dyeing materials listed.  There is info on flowers, leaves, bark, berries, and roots.  There is a wonderful section at the end on how to dry your plant materials for later use which I find very valuable.

Natural Dyeing by Jackie Crook
   -My first thought on this book was What a great section on Mordanting!!  Complete with pictures and a chart of mordant strength based on the type of fiber.  There is a little blurb on each plant then a very specific dyeing recipe.  It has tons of beautiful macro pictures.  Nothing on Japanese Indigo though which is a little disappointing.

Harvesting Color by Rebecca Burgess
      -This book is pretty and I love the photos but centered more on gathering dye plants from nature than growing in your garden.  There are little maps of the US for each plant heading which was really helpful.   Many of the plants listed are native to the southwestern US.   There is a cute hat knitting pattern in the back for putting the yarn you spin or dye to good use!

The Complete Guide to Natural Dyeing by Eva Lambert and Tracy Kendall
     -This book had some really nice ideas on indigo dyeing and results from overdyeing.  There is a also a sweet section on multicolor dyeing and resist dyeing that I haven't seen in the other books.  My only issue is the dyes used are tough to obtain unless you order powders from a supplier.  There wasn't one plant listed that will be used in my experiment.

Wild Color by Jenny Dean 
     -My favorite of all the books I've come across.  Its a beautiful book with tons of great information on cultivation and harvest of each dye material.  Lots of flower and bark dyeing info.  Along the side of each page is a color swatch of the dye material with different mordants.  Good concise directions of how to process the materials as well.  

This is by no means all of the natural dyeing books out there.  There is information everywhere on natural dyeing.  I'll continue to add to this list as I find more references.

Do you have a favorite reference on natural dyeing?

Lets talk mordants

In general, dyes need a little help in adhering to fabric.  I typically dye cellulose based textiles (ie. hemp, cotton, and linen) with fiber reactive dyes.  This type of dye needs soda ash (sodium carbonate) to "fix" the dyes, making them bond to the fabric fiber.  For protein fibers like animal fibers and silk, acid dyes are usually used and fixed with citric acid or vinegar.

With dyes obtained from plant material, you need a mordant.  Mordants are metal based salts that assist in dye adhesion and color saturation.  Here's where natural dyeing can get a little less eco-friendly.  Some of the metals that can be used as mordants can be dangerous and, in large quantities, can have a negative environmental impact.  Tin and chromium being among these.   Indigo does not need a mordant but we'll get to that a little later.

I chose to use alum and iron.  Both are readily available and have little environmental impact.  I purchased alum through the bulk section of my local health food store.  It can also be obtained through Dharma Trading or Pro-Chemical.  In addition to alum, I am also using an old cast iron sauce pan to simmer my dyebath.  Iron is a great mordant for muting colors with a gray cast. 

I thought it would be best to have a standard mordant formula for my experiment.  Through the many books I've read on natural dyeing, each one has a different idea for the concentration of mordant to pounds of fiber to be dyed.   I decided to do 15% wog (weight of goods) and see what happens.

For my first batch of materials:
10  2.5"x2.5" squares of hemp/organic cotton fabric
a fist full wad of Patons Classic 100% wool yarn

This batch of materials was really light so I only needed 1.15 grams of alum (approx. 1 tsp).  I dissolved it in my little stainless steel sauce pan with 20oz of water.  Then simmered the alum water with the fabric and yarn for 1 hour then let it cool.  I hung the yarn and hemp squares on the line to dry.

Now I have pre-mordanted material for when I'm ready to dye!

Introduction

Hello!  Welcome to my little experiment in natural dyes.  My name is Jay and I'm currently a student at Michigan State studying Apparel and Textile Design as well as Horticulture.  My specific interest is eco-friendly textiles and textile fibers, ie. hemp, organic cotton, flax, and sustainable wool and silk.   I am an avid sewist as well as a textile artist.

This blog is part of an independent study I'm working on.  The goal is to find (or grow) several types of plant matter and extract the natural dyes from them.  The blog will serve as documentation plus I will be putting together a physical book of the dyed materials.

When my instructor mentioned natural dyes as a great topic for an independent study, I jumped at the chance.  Because, well, I LOVE gardening and I LOVE dyeing.  This gave me the opportunity to do both.  I keep a fairly large urban vegetable garden (32' x 32') in my front yard.  This year I set aside a small bed dedicated to dye plants. 

From seed we planted:

• Japanese Indigo (Persicaria tinctorium)
• Dyers Coreopsis (Coreopsis tinctoria)
• French marigolds
• Bulls Blood Beets
• Hopi Red Amaranth
• Hopi Dye Sunflowers
• Fennel

Other possible dye plants already growing in my garden include

• Purple basil
• Rhubarb
• Hollyhocks
• Hibiscus

Other possible dye sources

• onion skins
• walnuts
• birch bark (gathered from felled birch trees) 

Some gratuitous garden pics :)

Front Yard Garden

Dye bed prepped and ready to plant 6/10/12 (beside pink flowers)

Dye plants ready to harvest!  8/06/12