Materials

How obtained / history

Mail-order from UK wholesaler; imported via France from China. Occasionally I import from China via a US supplier, by post. Also some Indian shawls from company in India supporting women's co-operatives

Re-usable Equipment

How obtained / history

Direct purchase or mail order; countless sources

Processes

Resources / materials consumed / used

Water, electricity, paper, foil

February 10th 2007

I have received my first sample lengths of silk from Ahimsa Peace Silks and started experimental work with them.

I have done an experimental de-gum of the finer sample received to see whether by selective removal of sericin I can create a ground on which dye will strike at different rates. I boiled the (clamped) sample in a solution of soda ash. There was a clear definition in the surface structure of the finished sample but it made little difference to the eventual dyeing which I did with my acid dyes and onion skin dye. I need to try this again with a heavier silk. The heavier the silk, I assume the more sericin I can remove.

De-gumming in boiling water and soda ash

Onion-skin dye, using white vinegar

Recording results: undyed samples

February: I have been continuing experiments with the Ahimsa eri / eri AS 522 silk. Ahimsa Peace Silks are made from the cocoons of wild and semi-wild Indian silk moths (eri, tussar and muga). In production the pupae are not stifled or killed to obtain reeled yarn. Eri cocoons are open-ended, and the tussar and muga silks are spun from pierced cocoons after the moths have emerged.

The eri / eri combination AS 522 is very fine fabric with an initial stiffness that seems to disappear on washing, but which then reappears when ironed. Ahimsa have told me that when it's handled it eventually softens up. So I rubbed a piece fiercely for half an hour or so and it transformed into something more like a very fine, soft linen. I have used onion skin dye on it and also a wax / acid dye process on this fabric. Both times the colour took up well.

I am a novice with natural dyes so I need to find out whether the onion skin dyes will fade, and will do a test in the studio. But I achieved a beautiful colour with about 4 cups of onion skins and a tablespoon of white vinegar. I steamed the silk too as I wasn't sure I had made the dye bath hot enough - I had used wax and so couldn't risk its melting. I think the colour was more intense after steaming but as I didn't reserve an unsteamed portion I can't be sure.

March 8th: I am trying to further my work with the Ahimsa Silk. I have some powdered madder from Couleurs de Plantes, purchased through Llynfi Textiles in Wales who have also provided some very helpful notes on mordanting for silk. As a result I have also bought some alum and cream of tartar from Fibercrafts. This is recommended for use with the alum. Then while tidying the studio, I came across an article on mordanting with alum by Michelle Whipplinger, published in a Surface Design Organisation Newsletter. I need to mordant and dye a sample soon.

I am thinking about ways to add some movement and focus to the fabric were I to make a long shawl or hanging length. Currently I am making gathers so I can tie knots on the tops of folds, rather like smocking.

Onion-skin dyed samples from record notes

Despite the care I took in waxing, the wax flaked badly around the ovals and dye bled outwards spoiling the outline of the oval. The dye bled and spread down the wrinkles that cut across the ovals. Not surprising, now I think about it. Sometimes the bleeding obvious (that's a pun..) is only apparent after the experiment.

So I may have to create this design in two wax / dye / de wax / steam processes, first doing an overall crackle dye and following it up by waxing and dyeing the ovals.

April 20th - 23rd 2007

Back to work on the Ahimsa Silks and working with natural dyes from Couleurs de Plantes. I mordanted some eri /eri Ahimsa Silk and also some commercial silks, using alum and cream of tartar. The colour produced is disappointingly like diluted Tomato Soup and not at all the shade I'd hoped for. I will need to think about overdyeing. I wanted a colour nearer to pink and am now advised that cochineal is the dye I'd need. However, having avoided destroying hundreds of silkworms during the production of my Ahimsa Silk, it would seem somewhat perverse to opt for mass slaughter elsewhere in the process so I am going to look at other options.

Twist-tied scarf in madder early in the process. Temperature was kept at around 60C and dyeing was done over 45 minutes

Same scarf as above right but about 30 minutes through. A lot of the dye has been taken up

Scarf untied. The resist has worked well on the georgette silk (not Ahimsa) but the colour isn't as I'd hoped and I will need to overdye

April 24th - 29th 2007

I madder-dyed a length of de-gummed Ahimsa Silk (cotton warp, Tassar silk weft) using Couleurs de Plantes powders. I achieved a stronger colour on the heavier weight than with previous silk but may have left it in the dye-pot a fraction too long. My impression was that it was redder about 15 minutes before I removed it and it went a little more tan or rust after that point. It spent 45 minutes - 1 hr at 60 C. I had stitched and tied a resist. The resist worked well and colour looks great on this fabric as the warp remains slightly lighter (see below right).

However, as a total design it still looked thin. So I ordered some logwood powder and tried a second dyeing. I also overdyed the eri / eri silk using clamped techniques. Results centre below. It has veered towards brown which is a shame as I wanted a more purpley effect, but it is a totally delicious chocolate brown for all that. I am thinking of doing a final indigo overdye.

Drying at top left of image is the length on the left (with logwoood overdyeing madder). Below is a sample on the light eri / eri silk. This was clamped different ways for each dyeing.

Above are two small samples showing madder dyeing alone, and madder with logwood overdye. The warp of this fabric is cotton and it is the difference in dye take-up which gives the fabric a beautiful quality

May 1st - 2nd

Working with a traditional process highlights the luxurious properties and conditions from which I currently benefit with bottled dyes. I decide - I want this sort of greeny blue. So I mix it, paint it, steam it; and the colour won't change. Traditional dyeing using mordants, dye extracts etc means I aim at a colour I want, achieve something else and then wonder what the hell I am going to do with it. This partly reflects my lack of experience because I am not sufficiently familiar with what each dye will do on each fibre. It also defines the sheer skill of traditional dyers.

May 12th

Natural Dyeing update: Colours for old ladies' stockings I can now do. It's achieving anything else on silk that is the problem. I have been using commercially produced georgette and crêpe for the latest experiments, dyeing backgrounds with dilutions of the dye extract. I recently bought a stainless steel bucket, having wondered if the aluminium pan I hadused to date was affecting the colours. But resuls in the steel bucket are the same. Madder is producing a rust or a yellow, without much red. Logwood is making a warm brown when I had hoped for purple. The blue in the logwood dye seems to gather on the pan sides and develops on the floor if I drip there: the unmordanted cotton floor cloth with ideas above its lowly station has some very nice Imperial purple patches on it now. But the silk won't take it up.

May 13th - 15th

Well now. An interesting couple of days with the natural dyes. I had a very helpful conversation with a natural dyer who lives in this area and is shortly running a course nearby. I regaled her with my tale of sad silk colours and she suggested that I should scour my commercial silks, just to make sure there is nothing in them that is affecting the uptake of dye. (I do wash them before dyeing, but scouring with soda ash in hot water is what she recommended). She then suggested I try solar dyeing with a scoured scarf. This means putting alum in a large jar with water and the dye extract, putting the silk into it and leaving it on a warm windowsill for a week or so. The heat rises gently but not too high. So I did.

You can see from the image opposite that the scarf has already taken on a purplish colour - not at all the sad brown I obtained last time (see last entry).

Having done this, and realising my advisor was spot on in her analysis, I decided to take the unexciting brown scarves and a madder-dyed length and dunk them in soda ash to scour them, even though they have already been dyed. Then I had planned to re mordant and re-dye, just to see what happened. What did happen rather astonished me.

Within half a minute of hitting the soda ash, the brown scarves turned purple and the rusty orange madder length turned a proper madder pink. I left them there a bit longer, then removed and rinsed them. The colour stayed the same - the madder sample seemed to have lost some depth in tone, but is still a very atrractive pink. There was colour in the bucket. I don't know whether the soda ash was stripping out some of the colour, stripping out what was in the silk or.....what?

Becoming more adventurous by the minute and swinging acrobatically from the lianas across in my kitchen, I seized my clamped dark brown scarf (which I had planned to overdye with indigo). Thinking of the soda ash mix as a kind of discharge solution, I then dunked the clamped piece in the bucket. Images are below.

May 16th - 20th

I've done lots of processing in the last few days; ironing out, steaming, scouring, mordanting new scarves. I've also developed a new design from some drawings of rocks I made on Orkney several years ago and which suddenly occurred to me as being suitable for wax drawing / dyeing. I'll post a photo eventually. The idea works with acid dyes. This is useful as I can get to know the design before using natural dyes. Natural dyes are more expensive in working time and money so I am more wary about using them in new work.

The last two pieces I dyed using logwood were made by making the dye-bath more alkaline. This seems to have produced the colours it should, and not the dull browns of previous attempts (see May 12th).

May 21st - 25th

I've been very busy with more de-waxing, steaming and another logwood mordant /dye. The logwood was dyed over some previously indigo-dyed scarves that I had been saving for another session. It's probably more normal to dye with indigo last of all, and not try to put logwood on top. But in fact I was sometimes filling in white or blank spaces on the originals so it worked reasonably well.

I added some soda ash to the dye bath and this seemed to produce the purple colour. Without it the logwood would have dyed brown. I need to learn whether there is something else I should use to make the bath more alkaline. I have heard chalk is sometimes added to a dyebath.

All dyeing was made with Couleurs de Plantes dyes.

Right: scrap of Ahimsa Peace Silk which I solar-dyed in the same jar with the scarf.

Logwood on Japanese Indigo. The Japanese Indigo lost its lovely turquoise colour and turned pale blue, but at least a trace remains

May 26th - 30th

On May 26th I was lucky to attend a Natural Dye workshop run by Jane Deane at our local Community Centre. Lucky for two reasons. One, because it was just what I need at the moment, I learned a lot and Jane had worked really hard to prepare and make the day a success. Two, because I might never have found out about it at all as I never saw it advertised anywhere (which wasn't Jane's fault). I saw it when reading our Parish Pump Magazine where it had a tiny mention and a phone number. Thanks, Parish Pump.

Jane had brought Tinctoria Dyes to the workshop and these were new to me. They look like Couleurs de Plantes powders. They come from India and there is a very large range. She had also pre-mordanted scraps of linen, cotton, wool, cotton velvet and silk throwsters' waste so that we could see the effect of the 4 main dyes we used on each fibre.

Above: the modifiers being prepared

In addition she had prepared four modifiers to use on the fabrics after dyeing. These were copper water, iron water, washing coda and citric acid.

The dyes were Basant / Kamala; Kango / Myrobalan, Madder and Cutch. Tinctoria gives some of the dyes names as opposed to using the true dye name, which I don't like much as I'd rather called a dye a dye.

I now have a very good resource file of 100 fabric samples. I have collated them and there are two images on the right.

At the end of the session Jane made each of us a jar with indigo grains, yeast and sugar so that we could take it home and try to ferment it. I have always wanted to do this.

In addition I finished 4 more Gozo scarves, dewaxed and steamed them. There is now a large batch for the dry cleaners'. Frantic last-minute tying, binding, folding and clamping because I am planning to do an indigo day if the weather holds up.

Above: shows page of Tinctoria Kango / Myrobalan samples modified with copper (above) and iron (below)

Fabric order is linen, cotton, wool, cotton velvet (above) and silk waste in small bag below

Above: shows page of Madder samples modified with copper (above) and iron (below). Fabric order as the image above.

Above: sets of samples ready to share between the students

Jane making up jars of indigo for us to try a fermentation

Indigo Day

And then May 30th was Indigo Day. I have begun to feel a bit of a fraud having the "indigo" title on my homepage as it's a long time since I made up a vat. It's just that my work hasn't been going that particular way. But using natural dyes has been building up to a big blue dye-in, and today was it.

Out came the indigo god a friend gave me and I set up in the garage. I made up a 10 litre vat using caustic soda and hydros. Interestingly, the small jar of indigo Jane Deane made up on Saturday is just beginning to ferment and I could smell it in the garage where I was working. That will be the eventual way to go - but for now it's the hard chemicals.

I put about 15 pieces through the vat and each had between 7 and 10 immersions, depending on the fabric and the resist method.

Above: Wetting out clamped and tied scarves before dipping

I resisted (ha ha) opening all but a few of the pieces in the evening and left them all overnight. Untying the twisted scarves is a picky-tricky process and must be done with care. Impatience can lead to holes, and I was as exhausted as my vat.

June 17th - 20th

Time for some images of the natural-dyed work completed in the indigo session last month. I dyed about 18 pieces of work in the session and the three on the right are among the most successful.

The first image on the right started life as a stitch-resist scarf dyed during a Japanese Indigo session with Jenny Balfour-Paul, who had invited me to dye with her a summer or so back. A great privelege. But not all the scarves were strong enough in design, so I saved them to overdye at some unknown date.

Once in mordant, however, the lovely Japanese Indigo turquoise changed to a soft blue - see here. I overdyed with logwood using clamps, reclamped, and finished off with synthetic indigo. On the final piece (right), but not in the photo, the original stitch resist can still be seen.

Georgette scarf dyed in logwood, modified, re-clamped and dyed with synthetic indigo

Opposite right is a crêpe de Chine scarf dyed with madder and indigo. This had several twist-tied immersions in madder to achieve variations in colour and texture, and then I overdyed with synthetic indigo. I think the alkaline contact that took pace in the indigo vat has really sharpened up the madder. I fact I am excited by the changes the alkaline mix made to many of the scarves I overdyed with indigo.

Note: I submitted these three scarves to Carbon Footprint, the Summer Exhibition at the Devon Guild of Craftsmen. They have been accepted and will be on view from June 30th - 9th September 2007.

Crêpe de Chine scarf dyed in Japanese Indigo, logwood and synthetic indigo

The left hand scarf, in georgette, had a dreary logwood-dyed background in what I described as my Old Lady's Hosiery colours. I resist-modified it with an alkaline dip, using clamps, and achieved a variety of brown and purple. (Old Lady Hosiery With Bruises Showing, I suppose).

This I overdyed with synthetic indigo using a re-clamp.I think it looks rather good now. I left the borders unclamped to achieve a dark border. This scarf had about 10 immersions in indigo.

Clay workings

It's been in my mind for some time to see how many colours of clay there are around the town. Devon is well-known for its red soil, and also the rich seams of clay which have been mined commercially for centuries.

So, armed with a map I have been walking a wide circuit taking clay samples from ditches and streams and noting their exact positions in case I need to find them again. I want to see if it's possible to use the clay as a pigment. Various books I have obtained on natural colours and dyes have helped me to see how I might try this. I started making soy milk and sizing some cotton calico squares by painting it on.

Straining soy milk

Five main clay colours I have identified. These are shown painted on the soy-sized calico at a fairly thick consistency

Poured clay drawing using three clays.

Indigo: global perspectives: Brighton October 13th 2007

Technical information on various products

Other artists in similar pursuit / research

Artists / designers working with sustainabilty in mind

Companies producing and selling more sustainable products

Aurora Silks: Cheryl Kolander, who "is" Aurora Silks, has a lifetime of experience working with silk as a professional textile artist and a Master Natural Dyer

http://www.aurorasilk.com/index.html

Woad powder and madder extract. Woad Barn, Rawhall Lane, Beetley, Dereham, Norfolk, NR20 4HH 01362 860218 http://www.woad-inc.co.uk

A wide range of extracts. Sold by Alison Daykin:

http://pure-tinctoria.designsales.co.uk/en

and Jane Deane

http://www.janedeane.co.uk/

Couleurs de Plantes

http://www.couleurs-de-plantes.com/index_uk.html

A French company selling a wide range of dyes and pigments

A limited range sold in the UK by Llynfi Textile Co

http://www.llynfitextiles.co.uk/

and The Mulberry Dyer http://www.mulberrydyer.co.uk