Dye Experiment 2: Harvest Moon

Friday, May 11, 2007

My first dye experiment was so much fun -- and it was really easy -- so I decided to try it again... only this time with food stuffs. I still want to stay away from the poisonous chemicals but was encouraged by Justine Turner's plant dye tutorial, Dyeing Wool with Organic Materials (PDF file), in which she writes that she uses safe mordants that are just ordinary baking items: vinegar, table salt, baking soda.

Supplies

• 2 x 50g balls of Novita Wool (100% superwash wool) in white (color #011)
• ground turmeric
• 1 pack of cheap hibiscus-rosehip infusion
• household vinegar
• baking soda
• table salt
• water
• aluminum foil
• 4 glass jars
• 2 pots

Preparation

I'd been doing some reading on the household mordants and how pH affects the color, so I decided to do 4 color experiments: turmeric + vinegar (acid), turmeric + baking soda (alkaline), hibiscus infusion + vinegar (acid) and hibiscus infusion + baking soda (alkaline).

With my gauge, one row of sock is about 80cm of yarn. I wanted three stripes per each color: 3 x 4 x 80 cm = 960 cm. This was the circumference of the skein. I soaked the skein overnight in 1.5 l lukewarm water with 10 ml table salt and about 150-200 ml vinegar mixed in.

• Jar #1: 300ml warm water, 7ml (1.5 teaspoons) turmeric, 30ml (2 tablespoons) vinegar
• Jar #2: 300ml warm water, 7ml turmeric, 10 ml (2 teaspoons) baking soda
• Jar 31: 300ml warm water, 3 bags of hibiscus infusion, 30ml vinegar
• Jar 31: 300ml warm water, 3 bags of hibiscus infusion, 5 ml (1 teaspoon) baking soda

All the rest of the dye stocks were pretty much what I expected, except the alkaline hibiscus infusion. Jar #1 was a strong yellow, jar #2 a orangy/reddish yellow, and jar #3 a rich, deep red. What surprised me was the fourth jar: when I added baking soda to the hibiscus infusion, it started foaming and sizzling violently and turned into a deep black with faintly purple foam on top.

Dyeing

This time I used the stove-top method: place the jars in pots, add water to the pots and turn the stove on on a low setting, letting the water heat up slowly close to boiling point. The colors looked really beautiful in the glass jars, but the dyes would not exhaust no matter how long I heated them. The black would barely stick and the yarn in that jar was faintly silvery gray. I added in more vinegar at various points in the already acidic stocks. Finally I got sick of the black not setting at all and decided to change the pH by adding vinegar to that as well. More foaming and sizzling! The dye stock turned into a deep plum/grape color. After about a million years, I turned the stove off and let the yarn cool to room temperature overnight.

Rinse & Wash

The dyes were nowhere near being exhausted so it took several rinses to get all the extra, unsoaked dye out. The only color that would really stick was the turmeric: it even dyed the cotton scrap yarns into vivid yellows! The rest of them just washed off into muted shades of brown. Especially the hibiscus infusion was a big disappointment since it had been a gorgeous raspberry color in the dye pot.

The final product was a mix of fall colors that are kind of pretty but not really my thing. I decided to name the colorway Harvest Moon which, incidentally, is the name of one Socks That Rock colorway which, not so incidentally, has pretty much the same colors (only more vivid).

• What you see is not always what you get. The dyes looked really bright and gorgeous in the dye pot but the yarn wouldn't come out the same. I guess this is why you need those mordants with natural dyeing, anyway. :P
• Dyeing with food coloring is much faster. The yarn was in the dye pots for several hours but the dyes still didn't exhaust. Granted, this was my first time using the stove-top method so I was a little cautious about heating the water up sufficiently.
• The colors you get with natural dyes are more subtle, more muted, more natural than the vivid ones you get with food dyes.
• I wanna try again! :) I need to do some more reading on mordants, how much you need them and what would be good -- and safe -- substitutes for the noxious chemicals suggested in nearly every recipe.

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