Fabricademy Week 4: Bio dyes in detail
Plant Dyes > Main post details here about the Fabricademy project assignment
Part 1 – Making plant dyes
Part 2 – Home natural dye experiments – preparation
Part 3 – Home natural dye experiments – Results
Part 4 – Plant dyed yarns into products > Post details here
Part 1 – Making plant dyes
One of my loves is being surrounded by nature, so I wanted to use the plant resources I had close to me. In London, I would have had many more options from the garden , but here in Barcelona we have a terrace and a few Mediterranean plants growing. I chose rosemary, sage and aparagi *tbc*.
Part 2 – Home natural dye experiments – preparation
I was really interested to see what the variations between the different Mordants and modifiers were.
As an avid embroiderer, I decided to pick a 100% cotton yarn that I could separate into several hanks and make lots of tests with simultaneously. At the same Merceria (Haberdashery), I also found a cotton lace and thought it would be nice to test a pre-made piece of trim. I was inspired by the blog (X)
Here are my pre-planning stages:
- Buy 100% cotton yarn 100g & 1meter of lace
- Split yarn into 6 balls of 15g, 90g total
- A leftover of 10g white cotton
- Create 6 hanks and split into 3 sets, 2 hanks in each
- Also divide the lace into 6 pieces and distribute the same way
- 2 hanks in each set would mean I could test two different dyes simultaneously.
- Each set of 2 represents a different mordant:
- Alum
- Iron Liquor (made by Mo)
- Vinegar (though it was stated in the lecture this was used only as a modifier, I found many blogs which stated it could potentially be used as natural mordant like salt is for berries. I actually followed this up with posting on a Facebook group which Prints with natural sources and have had some great responses.)
- See the gallery below for an easy way to wind a hank of yarn.
- The reason you separate the threads like this is so they don’t tangle during the dyeing process.
- * Note* I chose acrylic yarn to do this
- I also colour coded the yarns using small pieces of different colour threads:
- Pink & aqua = Alum
- Pink & blue = Iron Liquor
- Just pink = vinegar
Next steps
- Choose dyes/ plants/ pigments
- Sage – enough leaves to fill a 450ml jar. I picked the sage from a planter on my terrace
- Pimenton or Hot pepper powder – 20g or half a standard jar.
- I was hoping this would work like the Turmeric powder in our group tests (bright yellow colour), but as you will see, it gave a light colour.
- Create a recipe and plan for the dyeing stage. See my PDF here
- Get dyeing!
Please see image gallery below of my pre stages and link to the Tutorial video & stages.
Part 3 – Home natural dye experiments – Results
Here is how my yarns finally turned out.
Link to PDF list of internet Natural Dyeing Sources)
Part 4 – Plant dyed yarns into products > Post details here
Click above to see how my yarns finally turned out… and what I made with them!
Future ideas to do with Natural Dyeing and Bioplastics
- I would like to experiment further with the mordants, especially copper which I did not yet try and it gives a bluer shade to some dyes.
- Also the iron mordant i’d like to re-try with a stronger solution
- I do want do some dip-dyeing and look at pattern results for knitting and weaving.
- Create some naturally dyed bio plastics:
- Draw with it onto other bioplastic sheets, create patterns etc
- Use it on biodegradeable fabrics like cotton
- Use it as a connector between other fabrics, like a seam or sealing, especially when the bio-plastic is flexible
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