Mordanting

Before a fiber is to be dyed, mordanting can be very helpful.  Not all natural dye stuffs need it, but some do, they won't stick otherwise.
I use copper, iron, alum and tin for mordanting.
The alum I use is the same kind that you get in the seasonings aisle at the grocery store.  I buy it in bulk because it is more economical that way.
Copper took me a while find.  Finally found it at Home Depot.  It is used to kill roots in your sewer lines by putting it down the toilet.
Iron I ordered a pound of it from Earth Guild. http://www.earthguild.com/level2/products.htm
Tin I ordered from Aurora Silk when I ordered my Logwood.

Here is step by step of mrodanting.  The method is the same for all four mordants.  I have also included a chart of what percentage I use and any assistants as well.

1. Wet out the fiber.

2. Boil water for dissolving your mordant and assist.
3. Weigh your mordant and assist.

4. Dissolve your mordant in the boiling water.

5. Pour the dissolved mordant into the pot with the wet out fiber.
6. Heat the fiber slowly, over the course of an hour or more to 185F.  I use a thermometer that is designed to do meat in the oven.  I set if for chicken and set the alarm.  This way I don't forget that I was mordanting.

The pot is ready to go.

7. After is has reached 185F, turn the heat down just a little and let it simmer for 1 hour.  Then turn the heat off and leave until cool.  Some people rinse the yarn and others don't.  I do not have enough experience to say one way or another.  I did rise my yarn for the logwood, cochineal and rhubarb in previous posts.

Here is the pot of copper after it has cooled.

Here are copper and alum hanging out to dry.  These were not rinsed after mordanting.  They are for future use.

The percentages used are based on the yarn weight.  So if for example you have 100g of fiber to mordant, you would use 25g of alum and 8g cream of tartar.

mordant                assist

alum 25%             cream of tartar 8%

copper 4%           vinegar 5%

tin 1%                  cream of tartar 2%

iron 2%

Cochineal, Logwood and Rhubarb update

Sorry this has taken so long.
First the rhubarb leaves.  The ones that were drying ended up rotting and stinking so they went in the trash.  I still have the frozen ones, the extras in the trash bag went in the trash as well.  When I use the frozen ones I will update again about how well that works.

Here are the results of the logwood.
This is what the pot looked like the next day.

Here are some hanks just pulled from the pot.

Here they are after rinsing.  You can see how the color lightens.  I thought they were all going to be black.

You need to rinse you logwood really well if they dye bath wasn't strained really well.

Here they are on the line to dry.

Here is a close up of the copper mordanted fiber.  Nice color.

Here is my cochineal on the line, curing.  There are some experiments on the end that turned out nicely.

The cochineal took some extra effort to wet out before modifying.  As you can see the water just sits on the surface of the wool.  So the water had to be squeezed into the fiber.

So as I mentioned, the next step is modification.  This is where the color is changed by placing the yarn into a solution of either acid, such as vinegar or using citric acid, base, such as washing soda or ammonia, or other modifiers like copper or iron.  In this picture I have a hank from each mordant from the rhubarb, logwood and cochineal in a ammonia solution.  I used about 1 cup in the 2 gallon roasting pan.

Below are pictures of each yarn after all modifiers have been applied.

Logwood
First 5 are mordanted with alum.  The first one is not modified.  The second is modified using copper, third, iron, fourth, ammonia, fifth, citric acid.
Next 5 are mordanted with copper.  Modified as above.
Next 5 are mordanted with iron.  Modified as above.
Last 5 are mordanted with tin.  Modified as above.

Rhubarb is like the logwood, but hit or miss.  Remember this one was all experimental.

Cochineal is the same as the logwood.

Rhubarb and Logwood

Well while the cochineal is curing, lets do something else.  Rhubarb leaves and Logwood.

Yesterday my friend brought these rhubarb leaves to me for use with dying.  These are drying.  I froze some others, used 3 for this session and still have some left over.

I boiled them in a covered pot for 30 minutes.  When I removed the leaves, I put them in a ziplock bag and the threw them away.  My dye book says the are poisonous and not to breathe the vapors either.  So I also wore a mask.

Take the water from the pot for wetting out the yarn and add it to the rhubarb juice.  Then add the yarn.  This cools the boiled water down to a point where the yarn won't object to the temperature change.

Replaced the lid and turned the heat back on.  Simmered for one hour and left over night with the lid on.

Also over night I soaked my logwood in a jar of water and wet out the yarn for it.

The logwood was measured, in grams, on a scale.  I didn't use my entire packet.

This morning I rinsed that rhubarb yarn and hung it on the line.

Then I boiled the logwood for 20 minutes, strained, added more water and boiled again.

I put the 2 batches of water in the pot and added the water from wetting out and then the yarn.  I put the lid on, turned the heat on simmered for 45 minutes.  I have now shut the heat off, leaving the lid on and will find out tomorrow what happened.

Cochineal 2

Good Afternoon!
Here is what is next in the cochineal dyeing.
They have cooled all night.

I lifted each hank from the dye pot and placed it in my salad spinner.  This spinner is for fiber applications ONLY.  NOT food.

Then they were hung out on the line to dry.  Notice I didn't rinse.  I only spun them out and then hung them up.  They are to cure for a couple of days and then be rinsed.  We are having warm weather and no rain so maybe Friday morning, but might be Friday afternoon.  I'll put up a new post then.

I read once that you could dry your cochineals and reuse them, so that is what is going on here.

Cochineal

This is my first time dyeing with Cochineal beetles.  They are a tiny bug that live on Cacti in Mexico and South America.  Inside their body is a red substance they use for defense.  When they die and are dried, we can crush them and use them for dyeing fabric, yarn and the are also used in cosmetics and sometimes as a food dye.  Does that count in the parts per million?
I bought mine on line from http://cochinealdye.com/.  Shipping took a while for the kit, but the 25g that came alone, went very quickly.

Step One:
Mordant the yarn.  I'm not going to go into detail of this now.  I will another time.  The yarn below from left to right is mordanted in groups of five.  Iron, tin, copper and alum.

Step Two:
Wet out the fiber.  The directions from the kit said to use distilled or rain water.  While it rained for almost 24 hours before I did this, is wasn't enough to dye the yarn, so I asked my DH to stop and get some distilled water.  He bought this.  I used 1 and 3/4 gallons total.

I then put the yarn in a stainless steel stockpot and poured the room temperature water on top of it.

At the last minute I found out I had enough dye to add two more of these hanks.  They were left from a batch that didn't work the end of last week.  One is mordanted with iron and the other has nothing.  They were both in a pot with some cherry chips.  We'll see what happens.

Step Three:
Crush the bugs.

Step Four:
Put the bugs in a stocking.  My DH gave me a hose clamp to keep the stocking on the funnel.  This way the stocking doesn't slip over the top.  Dump them in, tie the top of the stocking and place them in an empty dye pot.

Step Five:
While crushing the cochineals, have some of the distilled water boiling.  When boiling, pour it over the cochineals.

Let the yarn soak all night, as well as the cochineals.  We'll finish the rest up tomorrow.