Packaging

For a long time packaging for my natural dyes has caused me headaches! I have used, as do most sellers, the ubiquitous polythene bags, bacause they are simple to get, reasonably priced and do a job. Sadly I find they do not do it well enough, but it seems to be what people expect. One of the issues is that people seem to like to see what they are buying - the plant matter, chopped up and shredded as it is, it's what they like to see, some because they can recognise what they are looking at and others because they want to KNOW what they are looking at.

I had a small flurry with the corn starch packaging - the enivironmental issue of polythene does bother me, sadly the corn starch is just not up to the job. Some of the chopped plant matter was OK, but lots of it found that the corn starch seemed to have an osmotic effect and water was actively encouraged into the packet from the atmosphere - not good!

One of the first things I wanted when I moved here was a dye store. I now have one! It is completely self contained, dry and cool. I can keep all my dye containers in one place and it is set up so that I can do all the bagging in there. I have professional scales, I have some laboratory standard calibration weights to ensure that my scales stay accurate, it is all important. BUT the most important thing really is THE DYESTUFF!

Over the years I have developed relationships with suppliers that I know will supply me with a quality product. I work with these dyes on a regular basis, so I know what I expect of them. If I expect the best - surely my customers do too?

Sooooo I have been looking for packaging that will work. Not everyone can do the dyeing immediately, so they need to know that the packet they have bought will look after what is inside until such time as they are able to use it. Dyestuff as with herbs should be kept in the dark and cool and dry to help it keep its qualities.

The new packets are brown paper, they have a polyfoil lining, they are still grip seal, but are also heat sealed, so until you open the packet there is a double protection there stopping the air get into the pack. The brown paper ensures the light isn't getting in and the polyfoil lining stops any exterior reactions from happening and NO atmospheric water should get in there at all.

Labelling has also been an issue. Working as I do across Europe it is difficult to label to keep everyone happy. So the labels now use the Latin name of the dyeplant as the main name. Everyone that uses natural dyes should be able to recognise the names and newcomers have a choice of English, German, Franch and Italian common names to look at to find the name they recognise. Oh and they haven't affected the price, that is dictated by the cost of the dyestuff to me!

I hope this meets with the approval of my customers, but I do feel so much happier about it and more content about my product!

testing the water

We were back in the UK again last weekend working so I decided to let the water try and clear itself (some hope!) The obvious thing to start doing is testing the water we have available. We already know that we have hard water so have jug carbon filters in the house, for our drinking water, there's one option to try, we collect rain water in butts, there's another and then we can spend lots of money buying de mineralised from the supermarket. I have always used the demineralised for extracting the colour, but there are too many parts to the dyeing process to buy it all, we need a viable solution!

Although I think there may come a time where I have to have the water analysed properly, over the last couple of days I've done the following tests.
I had a 100g hank of merino lace that I mordanted before I left North Wales (lovely soft water), so I split it down into small hanks of the same size and soaked them out in de mineralised water. (We had an analysis of the water from Dwr Cymru quite a while ago so that was the most neutral I could think of in a hurry!) I put 10g ground cochineal into 500ml demineralised water and left it to soak overnight. Next day I heated to boiling and simmered for half an hour then left it to cool. There was some evaporation so I split off 4 x 50ml liquid into separate tubs.

Into a stainless steel pan I put the first 50ml and added 1/2 pt demineralised water, added 1 small hank wool and heated to boiling, held there for 5 mins then allowed to cool enough to handle. Removed hank and poured the liquid back into its tub. The pan and jug were washed out with demineralised water between each sample and the same method was used for each type of water. I tried filtered tap water, tap water and rain water that I passed through a filter paper to remove any solid particles.(this picture is the tap water sample)

Observations:

Demineralised water stayed a beautiful clear red all through the experiment as did the rain water.

The tap water and carbon filtered tap water immediately went "gloupy" as soon as they were added to the cochineal liquid in the pan - you can see the "sludge" in the tub at the bottom.

filtered water went gloupy in the same way as tap water

Rain water was clear and red, although slightly brighter than the distilled, I would say that the colour shows that the water is slightly acidic (I tested with litmus afterwards)

Looking at the samples you can see that the tap water and filtered water are "patchy" with dull bits and OK bits, this would imply that there is some iron contamination there, the rainwater and de mineralised water are both good clear reds. It;s not very obvious but the rain water is slightly brighter - more scarlet (think that's my lack of photography knowledge!)

Clearly a carbon filter is not going to be solution enough! I need to find out what has been added to the water and then see if there is a filter that can clear it, what I really want to do (and have for quite a while) is rainwater harvesting for which we will need to get HUGE storage tanks to be able to store enough!

I mordanted 3kg of the merino whilst the water was really bad, so now I need to know whether I've ruined it or it can be salvedged with other dyes. The next tests are going to be with weld and the mordanted yarn to see if I get my normal yellows, and I'd better do some lightfastness testing too, to see how that's affected.

I know I want to spend more time in the dyehouse - but I didn't think it would be like this!

Problem Water

I have a commission I'm working on at the moment - I was hoping to be putting a lovely report here about it, however instead I am reporting a problem that at the moment I haven't a clue how to deal with!

I need to use cochineal to get the shade of red I'm looking for, I know it doesn't like hard water - but even with soft water in N Wales I had got into the habit of starting with de - ionised water, then adding that to the main bath.

I started sampling for this commission when I was still in Wales, so the colour I have to match was dyed there - I have already done some cochineal dyeing with the hard water we have here - so know I can get good red! The photo shows some wool I dyed just a few weeks ago, although I wasn't trying to colour match with this particular hank!

So to my problem! Last week the water went off - the whole village  was turned off and no one had any water coming into their house for about an hour. After it had been turned back on a note came round from the Commune to say that we must not drink the water, couldn't even use it to clean our teeth. It must be treated with "Javel" (bleach) at a certain percentage before consumption. This state lasted for a few days and then a couple of days ago we got the all clear. I have been doing my preparation work over the past few days - the scouring, mordanting and rinsing. Now I'm not sure if even the mordanting has worked properly. 

 The cochineal itself I did my usual method of soaking out in de ionised water, heated to boiling and then allowed to cool, I wanted as much colour as possible from this dyebath! The colour at this point looks rich and red, seems a good colour to me!

Yesterday I filled the big dyebath with tap water and then added in the cochineal. Horror - the bath went black! Then the cochineal precipitated out, I've never seen anything like it! It's horrid! It smells like a cochineal bath, but there the similarity ends!

This morning it looked gloupy and thick and black! I took a small amount out into a pan and added a small hank of wool and a small piece of cotton ribbon, heated them to boiling to see if there was any "dyeing" power in the bath at all - this is the result. A bit of "purple" maybe but I'm not a happy bunny! I wonder if they could have added more bleach - in the form of ammonia,  rather than chlorine but I really have no idea what they have done to my water!!!

I have now made lots of small hanks of the same wool but from some I had mordanted before, so I can do some experimenting! I will wet out in de - ionised water and then try making a small dyebath with filtered water, try other dyestuffs with the tap water - try anything to make it work!

 It's not good for a dyer to have problems with the water like this!

A good Red

With everything that is going on at the moment the last thing I would have expected is a new commission! The photo shows the current state of my workshop - I am in the throes of packing everything down ready for the move - hence the even more cluttered than normal appearance - how on earth am I supposed to work in this state?

I needed to produce a good red - in fact replicate a colour I produced back in 2006. My notes could at the moment be anywhere - so I had to rely on educated guesswork!

I have used cochineal and brazilwood, as with my soft water I am more likely to get the correct colour tones from those dyes. I tried cochineal two different ways - firstly the whole bugs and then straining them out and heating them several times to extract as much colour as possible. The second method I used I ground the bugs up first, as finely as I could and then soaked them overnight. I have got some fabulous colours, the photo I've taken is not showing them to their best advantage but they are really rich and deep!

I did have a lightbulb moment whilst doing this work - funny how things hit you really! There is often talk about how much colour rinses out when dyeing with cochineal and after I had completed the first hank - dyed with the liquid from the whole bugs, I was surprised to see how little colour came out in the rinse water - this photo is the first rinse honest!

When I did the second hank in the ground cochineal there was lots of colour coming out - I was stunned, then I looked at the side of the washing up bowl after I'd tipped the liquid away, lots of little grains of cochineal stuck there - too fine to have strained them out before dyeing, and the wool feels fine one rinsed and dried, but the "grains" have to go somewhere! So my tip from this is use the whole bug, or be prepared to do lots of rinsing!

The brazilwood (100%) I soaked overnight heated to boiling and then strained the wood chips off. Allowed the liquid to cool down and then immersed the yarn. Re heated and cooled. Very simple basic method, but it works!

The brazilwood red is the one in the middle, the ground cochineal is at th top and the whole bugs is the one at the bottom. The colour matching seems to be quire accurate too!

A return to the subject of Washfastness

Before Woolfest I was doing some washfastness testing of my yarns, I do these tests at random times and on random yarns so I get an idea of how good (or bad) the dyes I'm using are, and my standards of mordanting and dyeing of course.

My method is following the recommendations in Gill Dalby's book Natural dyes fast or fugitive (a very good book and one that I think doesn't get enough praise, it's small and reasonably priced and chock full of really sound information!) The tests are not totally scientific of course - I don't have access to full laboratories and testing equipment, but I make the best use of what I have.

The yarns are stitched into mordanted cotton parcels (I reckon that if there is colour leaching then the mordanted cotton will take up the dye and show staining more clearly than unmordanted) I use my washing machine on the whites wash cycle and a temperature of 60 degrees (not very environmentally friendly, but it is for a specific purpose and only at random times not every week or day) full spin and Bob's your uncle! The detergent I used for these samples was Amway SA8 colour, a powder detergent that I have used for many years, originally I bought it because it was great for septic tanks, it isn't actually organically certified, but is certainly more environment concious that most. I also have Ecover non Bio in the laundry room. I don't add fabric softeners in the laundry but I do always give my wools a final rinse of Eucalan when I've finished dyeing - it's a fabric conditioner and moth repellant and I like it lots!

This sample is wool, it's not the clearest of images and you can tell that the wool hasn't liked the boil wash but there is no transfer of colour at all onto the cotton, the threads on the right are originals and the felted blobs are the ones that have been washed. There is barely any difference in the colours between the originals and the blobs.

The dyes used here were indigo, persian berry and persian berry overdyed with indigo for the green, the yarn is my Welsh wool, it's a 2 ply yarn but knits up as a four ply and is fab for socks because it's so hardwearing (felts well too!!!)

The next samples were some linen yarns. The colour that you can see on the cotton is actually fibres that have rubbed off the linen, not colour transfer, not sure whether the photo is clear enough for you to make that out - but "in the flesh" it is obvious! Here the dyes used were madder, cochineal and logwood, again there is virtually no difference between the original colour and the washed. There are different thicknesses of thread some 8/2, 16/2 and 28/2. It's the 8/2 dyed with cochineal that has "rubbed" off onto the cotton, the others have a much higher twist to them, so I guess that's what's helped there.

I've given information about the detergents I use because it's another thing that can affect the dye colours - if I used one that was more alkaline I could find that the colours actually changed in the wash, the cochineals would go more purple for example, yet another thing to watch out for!

More bugs

Today has been hectic, the sunshine was lovely and inspired us to clean up the Saab, this is my father's car and needs to be sold - it's surplus to requirements as they say, so we took lots of lovely photos of it and will now do something about advertising it - not sure where's best though!

The cloth dyehouse was cleared out of junk ready for major dyeing week ahead - 15 metres of woolen cloth for the Weald and Downland musem plus hangings for our period tent plus getting ready for the Alternative Fashion week, Spitalfields, London - we have jumped in and decided to have a stall there!

I also played with the cochineal and sticklac some more. These dyes are so interesting, I thought I'd got lots of colour out of the bugs the other day, but found that I got almost a fresh dyepot from re- soaking them again today. I did crush up the cochineal which seemed to produce a new colour almost.

This is the sticklac exhaust before I added anything in - looks almost colourless, wouldn't believe I could get anything else from the bath.

But with some more boiling water onto the gloop as I call it the colour came out again. Not as strong as before, but certainly good enough to dye more fibres!

This is the fibres in the pan, just before I took them out to rinse them.