Natural dyes

[Silver Ether]

Clara ... have a read of this ... it may help with the shawl...

http://homepage.tinet.ie/~ojk/page7a.html

[pskipper]

I've used Alum in the past with nettles to good effect giving a pale green. Gorse flowers give a good yellow.

Urine was used as part of the alum production process in Stewart times.

[Wombat]

According to the aforementioned book, you can use them unmordnated and get tan or brown or use Alum mordanted wool (for brown), Iron mordanted wool (for dark brown) or copper sulphate in the dye bath as a mordant (for greenish brown)

Nev

[Berti]

I have done natural dyeing.

The urine thing, also was used in dyeing with indigo (and woad), as indigo needs it to react and start working. (sorry no difficult words right now as it is sunday morning and my brain not fully awake yet)
You then get a coppery shine on top of the indigo bath.
It's the most environmental *ahem* friendly way to dye with indigo.
There are other ways too, which I tried.

As for the dyeing with the mulberries not working and wool being hard to dye.
Well, wool is not hard to dye.....if it is 100 % wool, even with 25% poly it will still dye.
Wool will NOT felt at high temps, it is the agitation plus use of soap that does make felt.
Wool should be mordanted (say, with alum) BEFORE dyeing.
If you want the shawl to be pink, I suggest you use cochineal for colorfast results.
But it might be worthwhile to get some alum, mordant, and you can dye right after that.
Since I have never heard of mulberries to dye with, I have no clue whether you might need a fixant too.

Good luck
Berti

[Jack]

Gidday

I have always believed that you use whatever to fix the dye after dying and not before. But it was probably 50 years ago when my mother was dying things like that so probably got it wrong.

[Berti]

well, actually, it depends :)
sometimes you need an after bath, but this is MOST of the times for the wanted COLOR effect.
and some dyestuff DO only stick with mordants, others can be used without......depending on fastness of the dye.

so you might have not got it wrong, it depends on what results she was after :)

berti

[QuakerBear]

The correct name for a dye fixer is a mordant (try searching for mordants and you might have more success). Your mordant chemically binds with the dye to form a substance which is not water soluble, so it doesn't wash out.

Wool is usually dyed with an acid dye as this fixes well so if you're not having much succes dying it might be becase the berries you're using are alkaline or neutral not acid, while the salt mordant is working as well as it can. I'm not sure how you'd test the acidity at home, do the berries fizz in vinegar, oh, or maybe a soil Ph testing kit would work...

Table salt does usually work well (as mentioned above) but I would advice using a fair amount of it, perhaps more then mentioned above. Salts of metals eg iron, tin, copper or aluminium are most often used in industry.

And that's all I can remember from A-level chemistry

[buzzybee]

I think it was mulberries I tried not long ago ( i trained as a weaver at college and try to dye all my own wool, when I actually get around to doing any weaving) I readthat you shoud crush them in a pestle and mortar first, although I found this quite a task, and I tend to be a bit impatient. Also some dyes start coming out in to the water really quickly, but my results were atrcious cos i'm a bit impatient with dyes. it takes a couple of goes for me to get the colour out of them that I want. there are different schools of thought on the moranting process. The lady who kindly taught me during my finals ony used alum, or a bit of iron water I think which she got from soaking screws til she needd them I think. I use only alum as I read that it is the safest and kindest, (by the end of the process the water can be poured onto your flower beds, apparently there arecertain types of plants that require this nourisment). I use cream of tartar as the assistant, and mordant the yarns (I dont dye raw wool, I havn't got to learn spinning yet and felting isn't my forte) for about an hour. I usually then add the dyestuff to the mordant water (minus the wool) as I feel its a massive waste, any leftover mordant will continue to work in there and the pots I use are so thick it would take an age to boil again. temperature depends on the dye you are using, I can check with my books if you want to know about a specific one? my bible is : 'the craft of natural dyeing' by Jenny Dean.
In case you're interested i other colours, onion skins are amazing. I have a bag i my pantry that i keep them in util needed as it really is a case of the more the merrier for that colour, but you get a lovely thick yellow. I've done a lot of other colours but I buy them all in at the moment. It would be adream to have a dyers garden, but thats for the future (i've only just joined, my hello in the intros page will explain this!)
hope some of this helps, Becca.

[buzzybee]

also I remember that mulberries were not at all light fast, so thats something to consider.

[Ellendra]

For small amounts, using a copper kettle works if you need copper mordant.

If you're looking for iron mordant, soak steel wool in water overnight.

I've read that walnut hulls don't need a mordant, but I haven't tested that. I once cleaned walnuts barehanded and wound up with dark brown hands for several days.

Here's a recipe for a permanent black dye, it works for anything (cloth, leather, bone, a friend is even testing it for tattoos):

1 pan of chopped acorns with enough water to cover
1 pan water with steel wool soaked overnight

Soak item in pan #1 until dark brown, remove and dunk in pan #2. There is a chemical reaction between the tannin from the acorns, and the iron oxide in the water, that fixes a permanent black stain into the item (not just on the surface).

[Ellendra]

I missed a step: the acorns should be boiled until the water turns very very dark, then strain the acorns out.