On Sunday, I have joined the Resist dye with Madder Root workshop. We are using a natural plant as the dye material :
1. Madder root - to dye red colour
2. Onion skin - to dye yellow colour
and using Alum as mordant. This website has a full description of vegetable dyeing of different colour.
Before dyeing, we tie and clamp the silk and cotton handkerchief.
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Dye the materials in the dyepot with red and yellow colour. We have to repeat the alum and dye process several times (that is, alum and madder, and then alum and madder again and again..) until desired colour depth is achieved.
After dyed, rinse the dyed material until water is clear and dry it. In the picture, it is the yarn and silk dye.
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To dye silk and yarn, they absorb the colour more quickly, but not ready for the cotton handkerchieves. A few more dye processes are needed for cotton to obtain the desired colour. We still have one session of workshop after a couple of weeks. At that time, let's see what will the come out of the cotton dye.
Searching the internet, I find that Maiwa Handprints Ltd has provided natural dyeing stuff and dyeing instruction.
2 comments:
What an excellent class to take. I just ordered a bunch of seeds for just that, dyeing. Spring is about to be sprung over here, so I am anxiously waiting to start planting.
I can only hope I will do a bit of dyeing myself this summer...I needd to spend more time with my spinning, at least.
Great links too. Thank you.
Gosh, that looks like so much fun, how satisfying to make your own colours.
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