time for Madder

Made from dried ground roots of the madder plant, beautiful shades of pink and red can be had even on cellulose fabrics – if you take your time. I am impatient! I want to skip over things and still get the results I want, but natural dyes are teaching me to be patient, to take notes (what??!!) So my notes will be here, on this blog. Where else?

I’m not going to lie. I was disappointed with yesterday’s results on the onsie. So today I was determined to do better.

i scoured, i used tannin, I used alum to mordant. To scour, I boiled the cotton jersey garments with natural soap and about 1 tablespoon of soda ash. (I didn’t have any washing soda). at first with just the soap, the water stayed clean and clear. I knew I needed washing soda, but I didn’t want to go to the store. I started unpacking more of my supplies -I’ve just moved again- and there it was a bag of soda ash left from when i used to dye with procion. Almost as soon as i added it to the pot, the water become murky and yucky. Yay!

just the soap in the first photo, you can see what happened in the second photo when I added the soda ash.

I rinsed and simmered the garments in myrobalan, a tannin. (sorry forgot to take a photo), I used 4 teaspoons in a big pot of water, and let them cool 3 onsies and 3 little pairs of pants. I simmered for about an hour. When cool, I rinsed them and put them in another pot to which i added about 5 teaspoons of alum and very hot tap water. I let everything soak in there (and I also added the black walnut suit from yesterday. after about 2 hours (i know, I know I should have left them overnight), i rinsed again and got out another large pot filled with about 2 gallons of water and made a paste of two Tablespoons of crushed madder root and some hot water. I brought the heat up but didn’t boil, kept it below boiling, then added the same amount of madder again. (Wasn’t happening fast enough, reminds me of that time I took mushrooms). Here’s what I got –aren’t they sweet? The one on the right was left in the pot about an hour longer than the one on the left. I decided to leave everything else in the pot over night. I will bring the heat up again and then turn it off until morning.