Playing with Madder

It has been almost a month since the big snow storm and we are only now freeing ourselves of its cover. I am so happy to be able to say that spring is finally starting to break through.

While we were suffering through our own local version of a cabin fever, with overcast skies, snow and mud everywhere, we did somehow manage to do some experimentation with natural dyes.

Up to this point our work, with few minor exceptions, has been limited to undyed hand spun fibers, but I hope that natural dyeing will be our main theme for this year.

Our interest in natural dyes, began with a book on Persian carpets we read few years back, "The Root of Wild Madder" by Brian Murphy. So it is not by chance that our experiments began with one of the oldest and popular natural dyes known to man, madder.

The first dye bath was a wild mixture of different fibers, yarns and mordants. We were mainly interested in the quality of our local water in the new house, and kept the fibers in the dye for a little over an hour. Here is what it looked like, straight out of the dyebath.....

....after drying the effects of different mordants became evident.....

(1 hour bath: from left to right no mordant, 25% alum, 8% alum + 7% cot, 2% iron, 2% copper and 40% vinegar, 4% tin + 4% cot and 10% alum).

.....as well as the effects of different concentration of the same mordant, as in the example of alum below.....

(from left to right, 25% alum, 8% alum + 7% cot and 10% alum).

....and then the variations brought about by the different modifiers......

(same bath, 25% alum mordanted wool: no modifier, vinegar eyeballed, 4% copper, 4% sodium carbonate and 4% iron modifiers).

(same bath, 2% copper and 40% vinegar mordanted wool: no modifier, vinegar eyeballed,  4% sodium carbonate, 4% copper, and 4% iron modifiers).

(same bath, unmordanted wool: no modifier, vinegar eyeballed,  4% sodium carbonate, 4% copper, and 4% iron modifiers).

(same bath, 2% iron mordanted wool: no modifier, vinegar eyeballed,  4% sodium carbonate, 4% copper, and 4% iron modifiers).

......as if this palette was not enough, it also became evident that different fibers also have their say in the resultant color. In the example below, angora and merino blend is laid side by side with a sample of local Kinnauri wool of the same mordant concentrations.....

At the end of all this, and while we were fairly happy with our water and colors offered by our madder, we decided to run a couple other, less extensive experiments.

The first one was an energy efficient cold dye bath. We left the fibers standing in the cold bath for about 2 weeks, and took some fibers out every 3 or 4 days. We got the most pleasing results after about 5 days. Here they are:

(5 day cold bath, from left to right no mordant, 25% alum, 8% alum + 7% cot, 2% iron, 2% copper and 40% vinegar, 4% tin + 4% cot and 10% alum).

Even though the 5 and 10-day baths were our favorites, the color difference between 3, 5, 10 and 14-day bath durations was really minimal. This is illustrated below with the case and point of the 25% alum mordant, this difference as slight as it is, was nevertheless the most pronounced of all the mordants used...

(cold bath left to right: 3 day, 5 day, 10 day and 14 day bath).

The last experiment took us in the opposite direction. Here we dyed the same yarns, in an energy inefficient, low heat, long duration, 3-day bath. The results we got were partially predictable, but not without surprise.

In all of our experiments we used different concentrations of 4 mordants, namely alum, copper, iron and tin. In the two previous baths the mordants held their character, and often the different concentrations translated into different colors or tones. In this case everything, with the exception of tin turned into a big, brown blob. The first three groups of yarn were mordanted with alum, copper and iron (and they all came out the same color), the last is tin.