Woad

One of my dye herbs that I planted at the house was woad. Unfortunately I was only able to have one plant growing at the house. All the rest never came up from the seeds that I started, you will have this and I hope for better luck next year in that department.

Any way I got some leaves from the plant to make a vat of dye. Before anyone says anything I know that one plant is not enough to dye large patches at once so I’m only going to do small ones and keep over dyeing to see how dark I can get the samples.

I used Rita Buchanan’s book A Weavers Garden, to help me with creating the vat since I’ve never worked with fresh woad or any woad come to think of it before. The first step was of course to pick the leaves. Which I did and placed them in a clear quart jar, then the book says to bring water just up to the boil and pour it over the leaves I did this as well.

The next step was to leave it alone for about an hour till you have a tan red color liquid. I didn’t do that part, what I did was to leave it set for twenty four hours in full sun. I used the hot water to get the process started and left the sun do the work of keeping it warm for the rest of the time. I left the leaves in for this long to get as much of the blue out as possible. With such small amounts of woad at one time I want to get as much out of it as I can.

The next step is to remove the leaves then add some sodium carbonate also known as washing soda and a lot of air or oxygen into liquid to turn it blue. I will say that mine never turned blue when I added air with a whisk for ten minutes no less. No instead mine was a muddy swamp water color and at that point I was hoping I had the right plant. So I moved on to the next step.

For this step I could have chosen several methods to remove the oxygen from the vat to render it usably. Since I really didn’t have a lot of success with some of those options in the past with indigo vats I went the easy way out and used Spectralite also known as sodium hydrosulphite and left it sit for about an hour. As the oxygen is removed from the vat the vat will turn a yellow tan green color.

Of course mine is neon yellow, so here the moment of truth has arrived, is this a woad vat or did I pick a foreign weed thinking it was woad. I am happy to report as I removed my neon yellow yarn from the vat it started to turn green and then blue. So yes it was woad and I did every thing correctly and I got cool results. I was never expecting a dark color, there wasn’t enough leaves for that but I did get blue on the first try too.

For any one new to woad or indigo dyeing I want to recommend that you use the power of the sun to keep your vat at the correct temperature. Also if you use a clear jar you will be able to see the changes in the vat and learn from them. Last year I had a hard time with my indigo vats trying to figure out which step I was at. This way I can see the different stages as they happen. Or you can wow all the kids in the neighbor hood with this fun experiment or project.

Natural dying

On one of the yahoo groups there was a discussion on soaking wood chips in alcohol. As I was reading, it reminded me that I had some wood chips soaking for six months. So I decided to do some test samples to see what I would get if anything from what I had soaking.

What I had soaking was nutmeg, hickory chips, apple wood chips and I remembered I had some mushrooms in the freezer as well. So I decided to do some dye experiments. I don’t remember were I herd or read this but someone uses small baby food jars when sampling. I liked the idea and decided I would try that for my experiments as well.

I did this for all four sample batches.

1 Made a mordant solution of each mordant (a pint of each mordant)

2 Made the dye bath

3 Placed the sample yarn, 1/4c of mordant solution and 3/4c of dye in each jar (one jar for each mordant)

4 Placed each sealed jar in a large pot of hot water (just like you do to process can goods)

5 Left the jars simmer in the water bath for and hour

6 After cooled I let them dry, rinsed, washed, rinsed again and let them dry.


So I had a total of seven jars one with no mordant added, alum, tin, copper, iron, vinegar and washing soda. The dye baths were simmered at 212 degrees and the water bath was at 202 degrees. I like the way this worked out and have decided to use this method again when I have new dye stuff later this year to try out.

The fun stuff that I’m going to try out this year after I get them growing is, henna, amaranth red dye, dyer’s broom, eucalyptus, French marigold, weld, bull’s blood beet. If you take a look below you will see the finished results.

This is Nutmeg from left to right no mordant, alum, tin, copper, iron, vinager.

This is Hickory wood from left to right no mordant, alum, tin, copper, iron, vinager and washing soda.

This is Apple wood from left to right no mordant, alum, tin, copper, iron, vinager and washing soda.

This is Mushroom from left to right no mordant, alum, tin, copper, iron, vinager and washing soda.

To dye or not to dye

These poor socks have seen better days. So why not over dye them and give them a new look. That’s a wonderful idea I said to my self so off to the dye pot I go.
After cooking them for a couple of hours in an alkaline solution to scour them, in to the mordant bath they go. I’m trying to achieve a black so an Iron mordant should do the job. But wait there not at all rust color but purple. Now what did I do wrong, well we’ll just let it simmer for an hour and continue any way.

Time to rinse out the socks and dye them, into the dye bath they go. Wow did that turn black real fast, I’ll let them sit for a while and check them in a bit.

Oh no just a light grey, not at all what I’m after. Let’s raise the Ph of the dye bath that may do the trick. O heaven for bid now it’s a red brown not at all what I wanted so well leave it in and check back later.

When I originally dyed these socks I dyed them with roses. I had done some experimentation and roses with iron on cotton came out black. Roses must have a lot of tannin. That isn’t what really happened; they came out more of a dark brown. Not a bad color for socks I was just trying for the black thing.

So this time I decided to use pomegranate rinds, I herd that with iron you get a black so I thought I would give that a try. To my dismay that is not what you get with pomegranate rinds on cotton with a high Ph, at least not wqhen I do it.

Ok let’s take them out of the dye bath and oxidize for a while then we'll rinse them. Well they came out dark after the oxidization but lightened up when they were rinsed. So here they are in the drying stage, they are better looking then when I started. But there just not the black I was looking for I guess I will have to try again another time.