I grew indigo in my garden this year. It has been a long time since I first tried dyeing with fresh plants. My small patch will yield enough leaves to try a few different dyeing methods.
The leaves contain the indigo dye, so they are removed from the stems. Here I have thinned out whole plants but you can also pick leaves off the living plants and let them grow back.
The leaves go into the blender that’s 1/3 full of cold water and a few ice cubes. Unlike the way I usually dye with indigo, this is a cold method. After blending I add more leaves and blend again. The “indigo smoothie” is a beautiful green color. It is strained through a cloth and the juice is the dyebath.
The fiber is put into the cold dyebath. I am dyeing 30/2 silk and some wool/mohair yarn samples. There are different ways to do this, leaving the fiber in for longer or shorter or removing it periodically to oxidize. I am following John Marshall‘s method of rotating the skein slowly for one hour. As I work I can see the color changing.
Oxidizing, which means exposing the indigo dyed fiber to oxygen, deepens the color. I love the dark wet colors of the silk, but I know they will dry much lighter. This method yields pastel shades of blues and greens.
I have mordanted some of my fiber in alum to see what happens. I anticipate that it will be more greenish, picking up the yellow tones in the dyebath.
Here are the silk skeins I dyed. The unmordanted skein is a light blue/blue green. With an alum mordant I got a pale mint/sage green. Putting a mordanted skein in the leftover bath and letting it sit for a couple days I got a light yellow green color, which doesn’t really show in this photo. These light and even colors are beautiful as is but would also be nice for overdyeing.
I got more dramatic results on my wool/mohair samples. A nice light blue on unmordanted wool and a sage green on the wool with alum mordant. I put a mordanted and unmordanted sample in the leftover bath for a few days and got this nice spring green, very similar on both samples.
So what is next? I still have my leftover dye bath which is fermenting in a pot. Leftover dye bath can be heated to produce yellows, or alkalized to make blue. And I also have plants still growing in my garden. So more dye experiments are sure to follow.
Happy dyeing!
♥ Linda
Comments
All beautiful colors.
Thanks!
really interesting Linda! thanks for sharing!
Glad you enjoyed it. It’s a fun process.
I will give this a try. Just blend up the leaves and use? Seems so easy..
Thanks, Linda.
Yes, it is really easy. Start early in the morning and keep everything cold. I rotated the skein slowly so one part was always in the air and the other part was down in the dye.
Fantastic colors, and so interesting to see what happens without the alkalizing. I love the spring green color from the long soak.
Yes, it is really different than the usual way I dye with indigo. And the one step greens are unusual in the natural dye world.
Very nice Linda.
Thanks for checking it out!
Terrific. Linda!
Thanks for visiting the site!
This is great. Some of the terms I don’t know but could probably find on the internet. Thanks for doing this blog.
Yes, I am using some dye terminology but everything is fairly simple. I’d be happy to explain anything you don’t understand. Thanks for checking it out!
Thank you Linda. I am going to try this method with my indigo I planted. It seems easier than the method in Rita Buchanan’s book Dyers Garden.
I haven’t used Rita Buchanan’s recipe but a friend of mine has great results with it. I think this recipe will give you lighter colors.
This is great! Even I could do this. ☺
Of course you could. You are a wonderful fiber artist!
Any estimate of the leaf weight:weight of goods ratio? I don’t have many leaves, and don’t want to lose the color through dilution!
I dyed a 3 1/2 oz. skein in each bath I did. The leaves filled up that very large bowl that was pictured, I didn’t weigh them. I filled the blender with leaves, blended, and added more leaves until it was full. My bath was 2 blender loads of indigo juice. It doesn’t make a big dyebath, I added a little water so I had enough to work with. I would hesitate to put much more yarn in because of dilution, like you say.
Wondering what the light fastness will be – could you give us an update later on? LOVED those colors!
Yes, I will let you know. I am doing a light fastness test now. In general indigo fades more in the lighter shades. I also like to put indigo dyed fibers away out of the light for a while after dyeing them.
I did a lightfastness test on the wool yarns, I left them on a very sunny windowsill for three weeks with half of the yarn covered. The most noticeable fading was on the fresh indigo with alum mordant, the pale green one. Fading on the fresh indigo with no mordant (blue) and the mordanted yarn that was sooked in the leftover bath (spring green) was negligible.
Thanks, Linda. Good to know. Interesting the alum mordanted skein showed the most change.
Yes, that surprised me. I thought the unmordanted blue indigo would fade more… But it looks really good.
Many thanks for sharing your experiences.
Good luck with your dyeing!
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