Hi folks, some of us are still catching up on our dyepots and the NNMC semester is ending and their system will end our class input. I asked our teacher Liesel O if we could open up a thread on our subject so I could post my indigo and iron post mordant skein photos. She was happy to have us post our pictures here. This class will go again in the fall and was great fun. Here is the link to the class description on Liesel's web page. I took time to travel to MSW festival and missed some time at the dyepot so I got behind in my classwork.
Here's hoping other folks from class join me to post photos! Here are my skeins dyed so far, I can't find my madder photo but you get the drift of the class. These are all from wood chips, nut hulls or bugs so we went thru all the steps of prepping the dyestuff. I found it helpful to learn from another teacher. Everyone has a different approach!.jpg)
Your photos look great, Deb!
Liesel
This was my first indigo dip that I did yesterday afternoon. The colors did not come out as dark as I was expecting, so I'm not sure if I did something wrong or whether this is normal. The pH was correct and the vat color was greenish, but I was having trouble maintaining the temperature outside. Even though it was 90 degrees, the 20mph wind kept cooling off the vat pretty quickly. I plan to re-dip the white, fustic, cutch, and madder today. I like the colors on the fustic exhaust, cochineals, and logwood exhaust colors.
Penny
Fabulous colors. What mordant did you use with the cochineal?
I used alum on the cochineals. Here are the pictures of the cochineals before the indigo vat. After the first indigo dip, they both looked the same.
I was just playing with my 2nd indigo vat attempt today and the wind came up mid afternoon here as well, cooling the vat. I found that maintaining an even tempurature between 45C and 50C important. I ended up putting the vat onto the barbecue at a very low temp. which maintained the correct temps.
Good idea about using the barbecue. This was a second dip yesterday afternoon. I wasn't sure I was accomplishing much until I compared the colors to the originals, shown to the left of each indigo dipped skein.
Penny
amazing what a difference it makes! Beautiful combination of colours. I have small amounts of logwood, cochineal and a couple of others and am looking forward to trying them.
I have a propane burner, but didn't want to be bothered taking it out - the barbecue was easy and the lid made a good wind baffle.
Penny, your colors look great! You were braver than I was with this wind, I am west of Austin and we had some mean winds this weekend. I think that tomorrow will be safe for me to run my indigo pot without worrying about thunderstorms or wind. I am also going to try and do the iron dip this week. Can't wait to see the different ranges that come up. Too bad we ran out of semester time! Deb
I did my iron shift yesterday. The colors definitely came out sadder. The biggest surprise was the acid shifted cochineal--it came out basically black. It has been lots of fun working with these dyes. I think it will take quite awhile to master them to get an exact color..jpg)
Original color is the skein on the left.
Deb, even worse than the wind is the fact that we haven't even gotten an inch of rain here since April.
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wow, that black is awesome.....how much iron did you use, did you start with the 3% or pop up to the 5%. I am prepping my pots today for indigo, I am going to give the instant indigo a try...AND I am going to look for a separate pot somewhere used that I can use for the iron dip.
edit...I wasn't going to dip the cochineal in iron but now you have me thinking I need to skein some off and do it.....one more question...did you dip the cochineal in indigo and then iron or is that black just the cochineal straight to iron...make sense?
Deb, I started with 4% iron and added just a smidgen after the water had heated up. The instructions had said that there should be a color shift after 5 minutes and I didn't see it, so added a bit more. I didn't weight it, but it was less than a tablespoon, so I'm not sure that I hit 5%. None of these skeins were dipped in the indigo.
Final skeins from class.....all mordanted with alum sulfate and cream of tartar....
Nice presentation! Most interesting to me is the madder, well water vs rain water. I had read about using rain water, but never tried it. Guess I'll have to now! We certainly have had no shortage of rain water supply this year in western Oregon!
I have "lurked" on this thread since the beginning and found it very interesting. Thanks for sharing.
Jennifer
Class from Liesel at Northern New Mexico College was great to have some structure and paths defined to follow. When I am at the dyepot by myself I tend to wander from one area to the other in the way of color. I learned a lot! I still have a lot to learn. Color wheel from colors above, some shifted as expected, some barely shifted, loved the browns that occurred from the dips on the madder. Still need to work on green range. The cochineal showed color shifts more from the acid in the iron and indigo dip. Logwood barely shifted at all. Impact of my limestone well water much less than I expected on my madder. Instant indigo harder to calibrate than partially processed indigo I have used in the past. List of dyes and post dips are below photo. Enjoy! Deb Mc
I truly expected my madder from my well water to push way red since we are pulling water from almost pure limestone here in the Texas Hill Country. It was a surprise to me that it stayed orange. I suspect the cream of tarter pushed it. This entire color run was done with alum sulfate AND cream of tarter mordant. My next experiment will be to run madder with only AS mordant with rain water, well water, and then adding tumms tablets to 2 more baths of rain water and well water. It is nice to know the range you can get....but I love the indigo dips on the madder, luscious browns!
Up north in Delaware I definitely got two different madder colors from my city water and distilled water. I guess you need to learn what your valley gives you!
Really nice. I did not try osage orange and will have to as I love the range of colors you got. Also love the richness of the brown you got with walnut which I didn't try either.
The different colors you obtained with the well water vs rainwater are really interesting. Our well water is very high in iron, so I'm sure it had some effect on my colors. I stupidly did not think to stick out a tub yesterday to catch some rainwater, and who knows when we'll get rain again. I wish I had gotten some.
The indigo color is beautiful. How many dips did you do?
Penny
The indigo dip is just one dip, I used the instant indigo just to try it. It was hard to see how the if the oxygen and other stuff was in balance. This was the first time I have used rit color remover to activate it. Gave a nice blue. I still need more experience at the indigo pot.
If I were you I'd run some side by side test baths to see what you get with well water, rain water and distilled water with cochineal and madder. I bet you'll get some nice ranges to choose from. We had such chemically enhanced water up north that I only used distilled water. Cost a bit more but was more consistent in behavior. As if natural dyes are every consistent over the long term!
I got my walnut hulls and the osage orange chips from Liesel. I liked processing them, both were fairly easy to strain. They both also give you several exhaust baths to run more colors. I always keep some silk mordanted on the side to run thru the exhaust bath just to see what shades I get. Those skeins turn into scarves.
Take care Deb Mc
