I love snippets from the past. This post about a forthcoming book, The Exeter Cloth Dispatch Book 1763-5 looks fascinating.
Category: Dyestuffs
A natural dye rainbow
I have been doing a lot of experiments natural dyeing , and I decided to take a course, to get the knowledge in place systematically. So I’m doing a three module course with Justine Aldersey-Williams this year.
In module 1, on colour, we have been learning to make a rainbow out of three plant colours. Justine selected three of the oldest dyestuffs, as they stand the test of time: indigo for blue, weld for yellow, and madder for red.
My weld and indigo both worked well. As I was focussing on small samples, which takes a lot of faffing, I didn’t want to have a lot of due left to use up at the end of the session. I think I have been a bit stingy with the madder. The red is a bit pale.
I did three primary colours and overdyed with the same set of dye baths to get three secondary colours. Then I used modifiers to get a bigger range. I used white vinegar, washing soda, and an iron solution. One red changed so much that I thought it was orange. The weld seems to have dominated the reaction, as all the colours with any weld (yellow, orange and green) look practically the same.
The whole process took quite a lot of time. Normally, I would not have needed to record everything, and keep all the samples in the correct order. As a result, I left everything top dry in a foil tray. And managed to dry creases in. I knew perfectly well that was going to happen, but by the time I got that far I was too tired to think straight.
For the course, I had to show dyed samples in my dye journal, and also prepare a sample card. I’ve also done a small wall hanging to use a nail in the wall of the sewing room (left over from its previous use in my ex’s office). I have another set of samples, which I plan to turn into bunting, but I haven’t got that far yet…
Crayon colours
An indigo vat
After my woad experiment in the summer, I intended to have another go with a different recipe. But the woad crop wasn’t good enough.
So now I’m trying with powdered indigo from Tamil Nadu. I’m using the 123 method, because not only is it more environmentally friendly, but also it doesn’t involve the cooker, which means there is a lower chance of smelling the house out.
The method is simple. 1 part indigo to 2 parts calcium hydroxide (lime, an alkali), and 3 parts fructose sugar, all mixed in warm water and combined. I’m amazed to read that sugar is one of the most acidic foodstuffs! Some people use a big bucket, but I used a big glass jar. Not only can you see what is going on, but also the narrower neck lessens the chance that extra oxygen will get in.
If you are thinking of giving it a try, it is important to hydrate the dye powder by shaking it in a lidded jar, with water and some pebbles first. If you don’t do this, you 90% of the colour is lost. It is also important to add powder to warm water at each stage, not the other way round.
The glass jar turned out to be a good move. The vat is supposed to separate out, so the sludge is at the bottom, with some reddish dye liquid above it, with a “bloom” of coppery blueish froth on the top. when I checked the following day, it looked just the same as when I mixed it, except the surface looked slightly bronze. I checked the instructions, and found that although it said leave it at room temperature, a bit later it said to keep it above 16°C. I had mixed it in the studio and left it in there overnight. On a frosty night in February, in a large room with a big window and one radiator.
So I moved it into the kitchen, where there is under floor heating. But of course, by now the liquid was cold, so it took time to get going again. But I got there. I tried 4 different tie dye techniques on scrap cotton, and two silk scarves. To act as a resist, I used a mixture of rubber bands, bulldog clips, and gathered stitching.
Here are the results!
The original mixture
The surface of the original
The “bloom” on the surface of the vat
Some cotton samples
Two silk scarves, ready to dye
Just out of the vat
After oxidisation
The mother vat
Scarves drying
The cotton samples
The drying stage
The theory of home made natural inks
When I get myself organised, I am going to try making inks and watercolours out of natural dyestuffs.
But it does take some organisation.
This post is just the sort of thing that should inspire me, but actually makes the dithering worse. It shows all the beautiful colours you can make from Buckthorn, but you need to add various substances to change the acidity to get the range. This means several issues:
- I need to get all the relevant substances lined up beforehand.
- I need enough bottles and jars to store the results.
- I need to be meticulous about record keeping. In the heat of the moment. Hmm.
All of that is much harder than cooking the dyestuff in the slow cooker, and then adding a couple of scarves.
Then I started to wonder where my nearest Buckthorn tree is. And would it be worth growing some? Then I remembered that sometimes the same name is used on both sides of the Atlantic for different trees. So I hit Google.
First I found Purging Buckthorn (Rhamnus cathartica), which looks like the plant in the post. The Woodland Trust (who seem like a good source) say “Traditionally the fruits and bark were used to make a yellow dye.” This is the one Jenny Dean mentions, which is a good sign. But I don’t see anything about fastness.
The Woodland Trust also have an entry for Alder buckthorn (Frangula alnus), which says “A yellow dye is obtained from the leaves and bark. It is used in Russia and turns black when mixed with salts of iron. A green dye is obtained from the unripe fruit, and a blue or grey dye is obtained from the ripe berries.”
Well, I’ve got space, so I could try both. Then I started looking for a nice copyright free picture that I could put in this post. And I found that it is a big problem for homeowners in Minnesota. It is an invasive, fast grower, that has deep roots and harbours pests.
Oh, and there is the Sea Buckthorn, which has four times the amount of vitamin C in its berries than a lemon has, and I live by the sea…
OK, time to do something useful. Or at leat time to look at some more pretty colours.
Progress in the dye garden
I’m beginning to move on from the idea of a dedicated dye garden.
I suspected this moment would come.
Originally, I had plans for a kitchen garden. I set up eight raised beds, and allocated the beds to different types of crop. I grew annuals on the square foot basis, where plant spacing is governed by how many plants fit in a square foot of the plot, so you might have 9 smaller plants, but one nice big cabbage. This system has lots of advantages. It helps you to move away from the initial pleasure of having a whole row of lettuce, and then realising that you have a glut, just at the same time as everyone else does. You plant a couple of squares with each crop, and as each is harvested you plant something else in that space. With a small amount of planning, you have a sensible quantity of a variety of crops, and you don’t have to think too hard about crop rotation. And on top of all that, the plot looks nicer, because if there are unsightly spaces, they are smaller and well distributed. As a theory, I can recommend it.
My garden is very windy, so I selected as many weatherproof varieties as I could find, giving priority to dwarf ones, on the theory that they had to be less vulnerable to wind damage. Then I sorted out some perennials. I had a bed of rhubarb (two thirds of which is still there), some raspberries and strawberries (a magnet for bindweed) and some asparagus (which did nothing at all).
The broad beans did well in the first year, as did the lettuce and some of the sprouts. But by the second year, word had got out. Before anything was near being ready for me to eat, it had already gone to a selection of slugs, rabbits, pigeons, and deer.
Last year I decided to try a dye garden. I planted up a couple of beds with perennial dye plants, and left them to settle for the first year. Obviously, all the plants were quite small, so I filled in the spaces with some annuals that would cheer things up and keep the dye theme going. I got some beautiful marigolds and some dark fuchsias and petunias from the local nursery. The next time I looked, they were gone. And yes, I did remember slug pellets.
I have had a couple of sessions over the winter combing the seed catalogues for entries including the words tinctorius or tinctoria, and had an interesting selection of seeds to try this year. Most are annuals. I suspect these will go the same way as the annual vegetables. Some are sunflowers, which I think won’t survive the wind.
I drew up a sowing plan, and put reminders in my calendar. But next door’s cat used the roof of my little greenhouse as a springboard to get back over the fence once too often, so I’ve had a bit of a bottleneck, with not enough space for growing plants on the window sill. So some seeds are still in the packet, and inevitably of course, some didn’t germinate.
So I reckon that annual seeds are probably not the way forward. Until recently, there hasn’t been much sign of life in those raised beds, if you don’t count dandelions, nettles, and docks. The comfrey and the woad are making a good effort, but there was no sign of anything else.
Comfrey
Woad in its second year
I had a massive weeding session over the Bank Holiday weekend, and discovered a few tentative shoots emerging. The rosemary and sage are still there from the kitchen garden, and although they show signs of being attacked by the Beast from the East, they are trying very hard to get over it.
So I am going to leave last year’s planting to sort itself out, see how far I get with this year’s annuals, and fill up the rest with perennials and shrubs. I’ll plant dyestuff when I can, but you have to be realistic, don’t you?
Red onion skins
I heard on Woman’s Hour recently that red onion skins give green. I thought that was worth a go. Onion skins are very light, and you hear tales of people getting their friends and neighbours to save all theirs to go into the dye pot. As most people are dying enough fibre to make a garment or a quilt, while I’m only wanting to dye a silk scarf, I thought it was worth a go.
One supper from a Nadiya Hussain red onion recipe gave me more than I needed, in fact I had enough for two. I scrunched up both scarves, and put rubber bands round the bundle for one to get a marbled effect, and on the other I put some clothes pegs to give a random resist pattern.
The dye bath was pretty much the same colour as the skins that went in, but the result was a definite old gold, as so many natural dye stuffs yield. It is a nice colour, and it is quite different from the burnt orange I got with white onion skins.
So I wondered whether it was a mistake to use mordanted fabric. I just reached for the basket of alum mordanted scarves waiting to be processed, forgetting that white onion skins don’t need a mordant, so probably the red don’t either. The result was much more like the colour of a red onion.
But not green. And it proves that changing the mordant changes the result. But I didn’t have anything mordanted with another chemical handy. What else might change the dye colour? Acidity.
There was quite a lot of colour left in the second due bath, so I got out the ph indicator paper, and found that it was neutral. So I split it into two bowls, and added vinegar to one to make it acidic, and bicarbonate of soda to the other to make it alkali. Nothing terribly scientific, just enough of each to get the ph to 8 and 3.
So here are the results of the red onion experiments so far. From left to right, we have:
- unmordanted,
- the two alum mordanted,
- the exhaust dye bath from the one on the left, with white vinegar added,
- and the other half of the exhaust due bath, with bicarbonate of soda added.
So still no green. I’m guessing the bicarbonate of soda had no effect, as the paler colour is probably the result of reusing the dye. Of course, what I should have done is to split the dye bath into three, so I had an un-adapted “control”, but I didn’t think of that in time.
So now the experiment is on pause until I have more red onion skins.
First adventures with woad
Well, I’ve finally bitten the bullet.
I’ve read dire warnings about the importance of being patient with woad harvesting, because:
- you need a lot of leaves to get a decent amount of dye, and
- the chemicals that provide the blue dye take time to develop in the plant.
I only have a few plants, and they don’t look very big. However, on the whole people who write about natural dyes are working in larger quantities than I am. They need enough yarn to knit a jumper, or the fabric to make a tablecloth. I’m working with light weight scarves that weigh 7-8g each.
I decided this week that I needed to make a start and see what happened. I used the vinegar method, which tends to extract less pigment, but it is quicker, so I thought it would be a good guide as to how things were going. After all, I didn’t even know how much a woad leaf weighed, so I didn’t know how much I needed.
Woad is a member of the cabbage family, so I wasn’t surprised that as I chopped it up there was a smell of overcooked cabbage. It got quite strong, so I was pleased to mask that smell by covering the chopped leaves with a mixture of cold water and white vinegar. I kneaded it for 5 minutes, strained off the liquid, and repeated the process. That produced a bright green liquid, which I reckoned would be enough for 5 scarves.
I thought I would play safe, in case it is too early in the season to get a lot of colour. I put in two white scarves, one of a pale mustard that comes from buddleia, and one that had been dyed a golden orange with dahlias. I tied them all up in various ways to make patterns.
The scarves soaked in the dye bath for about an hour, and then oxidised on the washing line until they were dry. I left two more scarves in the dye bath overnight, to soak up any remaining colour.
I’m pleased with the result, but I found that this dye doesn’t penetrate the folds quite as much as others I have used, so I have rather more undyed fabric than I expected. With the gold scarves that I’d previously dyed with dahlia and buddleia, I was expecting the result to be green. However, because of the lack of penetration there is rather more gold left than I had bargained for. I might have another go at those two…
Did I tell you I’ve got some woad plants?
I don’t know if you have ever tried, but buying woad plants is quite difficult. Seeds are quite easy to come by, but I don’t have fantastic conditions for seeds and seedlings. One of the reasons I am starting a dye garden is that I can’t cope with vegetables.
I live in an old windmill, so you won’t be surprised to know that it is quite windy here. My theory is that I need to grow varieties that are marked weather resistant, particularly if they are also marked wind resistant. At a minimum, I go for dwarf. The less you stick up, the less you get hit by the wind.
So I grew veg from seed. When they got to the hardening off stage, the “sheltered” place I found for them just wasn’t quite sheltered enough. I replaced them with plants from the local garden centre, but something ate them.
So after a couple of years of trying, I’ve decided that a vegetable patch won’t work. Before I resorted to shrubs, I started my experiments with dyeing. My research into useful dye plants that are likely to grow here yielded quite a lot that could only be grown from seed.
So I prioritised those that I couldn’t find for sale in plant form.
But then when I tried to buy woad plants, all the websites said they were sold out.
Bother.
So I was really pleased when I found these. They have obviously had an ordeal in the post. They were beautifully packed, but it has been quite warm recently. They looked so squashed and tired when they arrived that it just didn’t seem fair to take a picture of them.
But now, after a few days of regular watering on a warm floor, next to a nice big window, they have recovered. I’m going to plant them out!
Finally, it is planting time!
I’m quite excited.
All winter, I have been tending some seeds.
OK, so let’s be honest, that gives a rather broad impression. I planted some seeds in the autumn:
- Some had to go in situ. Nothing seems to have happen there.
- The rest had to go in seed trays, in a frost free environment. Some did nothing at all. One packet produced one plant.
Now the rest are ready to be re-potted or planted out. And because I don’t have enough flower pots of a suitable size, out they are going.
Fortunately, I now have a cold frame to harden them off. So they have not been the victim of the wind. Keep your fingers crossed that they survive the peasants, deer, and rabbits whom I suspect of eating the vegetable plants!
The one I’m most excited about is the single survivor with big leaves. He is comfrey. Apparently, William Morris said that comfrey gives the best natural greens. So I can’t wait to try it. After all, anyone who can come up with 
“Have nothing in your home that you do not know to be beautiful or believe to be useful” must know a thing or two.
The more delicate looking plants are Dyers’ Broom.
I’ve stocked up on slug pellets, and I have my fingers crossed!!