Natural Dyeing – Madder

Madder has a long history of use as a red dye – a color which I have yet to attain.  The color is contained in the root, which is usually ground to release the dye.  I have considered planting madder plants but it would take 3-5 years before I could start harvesting the roots and, while I can be patient, I did not want to wait that long before I started working with madder, so I went to Aurora Silk and bought a pound of it.

Tips to know for madder.  It needs an alkaline/hard water to draw out the reds.  Also, if you apply too high a heat it will turn brown.  Finally, you need a high ratio of root to yarn weight to attain a good deep color.

Then we get to what I did.

The first go around I soaked 2 ounces of madder root in alcohol and 2 ounces of madder root in water – put the dye into dyepots, added enough water to fill the pots and then added my yarn.  I heated to around 120 degrees for an hour and did not discern a real difference in the resulting color.  Both were a light coral/peach tone.  Here is what we got from this first round. (The lighter tone is from an exhaust bath)

I also did a two tone that came out lovely by leaving half of the yarn hanging into the dye pot longer than the other half.  Here is what I got.

I love the tonal variations in the yarn – something that just seems to occur naturally when dyeing with plants.  Or maybe I just am not good enough to get solid colors but that’s okay.  I love these colors.

Now I still was not getting red so I tried using 4 ounces of root and going total cold water – and it did not work.

I put the root in a stainless steel pot for this one.

I filled the pot with hot tap water to get the process going – which I had done the last time.  Note to self – next time add an alkali additive at this point.  I am going to do that with the next batch and will let you know if it works out.

Because I was in search of a red, I left the root to soak for several days without adding heat.  I am thinking now that I left it to soak for too long because the resulting color is muddy and I am wondering if it started to get moldy in there.  I strained the dye through my metal strainer into another pot and added my wet alum mordanted yarn.

The color that I was getting was a beigey/taupey yucky color.  I decided to add a low heat and then remembered that the water needed to be alkali, so I added some washing soda to the mix to up the alkali level.  The resulting yarn, however, was a disappointment.

The color is muddy and there were some parts that contrasted with a deeper red – but not well enough to create a usuable varigation.

These pictures are after dyeing but before re-skeining, which is why the yarn looks so messy.

I took the second skein I dyed and stuck the ends in some brazilwood to cover some of the red splotches in the yarn and too see what I would get.  Here is the second skein.

This might look okay in the finished product but I won’t know until it is rinsed and re-skeined.

I am going to keep working with the madder root.  I still have a half a pound of root to work with and obviously more experimentation is needed.  In some ways I think I rushed this last round.  I only had Saturday to work on dyeing yarns so I went with what I had and had too many things going I think.  Time to slow down and think this all through before next weekend’s dye pots get going.

Here is what I also did last week.

I finally rinsed the logwood/brazilwood/cochineal yarn.  Here are the pictures pre-rinse and post rinse.

Next week I should have it skeined.  The colors after rinsing are a bit more muted.  What surprised me is that the brazilwood stayed brighter than I thought it would – less wine and more red that I anticipated.  Hmmmm.

I also did an iron mordanted brazilwood as I wanted to see if I could get away from the wine colors I got with the alum mordant and see if I could hang onto the reds a little longer.  Here is what I got before rinsing.

This picture is with the flash – it is darker in tone in actuality, but it is a grey day outside so there is no chance of getting a truer color in today’s light.  Sorry.

I also did a phenomenal cold water soak purple logwood.  All of the pictures I tried to get today just turned out blue – and it is a deep rich purple.  Here is what I got right after I took it out of the dye pot – but the photo is still bluer than the yarn.

Sorry – its the best I can get of this color.

I also played with a cold water sandlewood soak that I nuked to set the color.

I did not like the resulting solid color so I started experimenting.  I put one end in an ammonia dip (alkali), one end in a vinegar dip (acid) and the middle in some iron mordant.

Yeah, I know.  High Tech.

The resulting colored yarn turned out like this.

The ammonia end turned a darker brown.  The vinegar end made it just slightly orangier but not much and the iron almost seemed to leach out the color.  Hmmm.

After it started to dry, I again decided I was unhappy with the result, and stuck an end into the madder, but got no change, so I then put it into the iron mordanted brazil pot and ended up with this.

I’m not sure if I love it, but I like it.  Sandlewood can take a long time to rinse so the verdict is out on the final product.

The rest of this week is going to be devoted to re-skeining all of this.  It is a little out of control.  Next Saturday will be rinsing these and hopefully working on green.  IF I get a little more caught up with work.  Chip has been busy filling orders so I don’t know where we stand on a Hawk Studio blog post for tomorrow but I have lots for Food on Friday.  Have a great Wednesday.