Hi dear, I am a beginner, I learned eco-printing in South Thailand just now and I fell in love. I am making my research because I want to become a real ARTIST. Your video is very practical, very informative. I am Saving it in my newly creating Personal Tutorial. Thank you :-)
I'm glad you are finding my video to be helpful. I made it in hopes of helping people create beautiful things with natural dyes, so I am very happy you are using it.
Nice experiment. You would get better results when you fabric can float nicely in the mordant or dye bath. That is probably where the splotches came from.
Silk you really need acid dyes for. So vinegar or citric acid works well. You can use tannic acid as well but things like alkali mordant don't work well. I have mostly just used vinegar and I did use rhubarb leaves for oxalic acid but that didn't work well for Me if you use a very strong vinegar it can damage the silk too. A little makes it nice and shiney but a lot can make it go past that and weaken the fibres so I have just stuck with vinegar but you can use stronger acids with different silk ..I usually have mulberry silk which is shiney and delicate but stronger types would probably take more acidity.
Have you made a video discussing your hands down favorite mordanting for different dyes? I’m getting into natural dye and this information is so helpful because it’s obvious that different dyes react differently to different mordanting methods.
I think in this video I really figured out my favorites for these 4 dyes. Although, I still want to test a couple methods against each other for Logwood, because the combo of Sodium Acetate and Alum has worked very well for it too, and I'd like to see if combining that with tannin would be even better than Tannin + Aluminum Acetate with chalk. I would love to one day have the best methods for each dye really nailed down! There's just so many different possible methods. I'm glad you are also exploring natural dyeing, and I'm very happy to hear that you have found my video to be helpful! Thank you for watching!
I'm just dipping my toe in natural dyeing, and this video is SOOOO helpful. I'm curious if you've tried, or have thought about trying, testing various tannin mordants to see if they give different results (i.e gallnut, vs. tara vs. mimosa)?
I haven't directly compared them, but I have used several different ones. They are harder to compare the results from because each tannin source has their own color that it adds to the fibers. I generally try to go with the tannin mordant that will not fight the color of the dye I'm using. So light colored tannins for bright light dyes, yellow tint tannins for yellow/orange dyes. Tan/brown tannins for darker/brown dyes. The concentration of tannin in each does vary, so you could go with higher percentage ones to get the most out of the mordanting. It would be a good experiment to try in the future! Thank you for appreciating my video!
I.m so interested in printing with natural dyes ..just started .n thank you so much . Your videos have so much details with hours of hard work . The log wood color is not easily available in south i dia ..wd love to work with it.
Great video, thanks. There is a lot of information out now about natural dyeing but it's hard to know how much of it is based on science. Seeing a genuine citizen science experiment really helps those of us who don't have endless time & money for our own experiments. I'm curious though, have you experimented with how long the cotton spends in tannin and / or mordant ?
Thank you! I'm glad you found my experiment to be helpful. I haven't really experimented with how much time the fibers spend in the mordants, I usually stick to letting them soak in both tannin and the metal salt baths for about an hour each. I have left fibers in the metal salt baths for longer (not really intentionally, more like because I was busy with something) and I can't say I saw that make any difference. But I haven't done any direct comparisons, so that's another experiment that could definitely be done in the future.
I'm so happy you like my videos! So, yes, you CAN use any cotton fabric, but a lot of different factors will make a difference in the intensity of the color that you get. For one thing, the fabric needs to be scoured (cleaned of oils) before dyeing, that makes a huge difference. Second, I mostly use raw unbleached cotton, I feel it is more absorbent than cotton that has been bleached white. The type of fabric is the last big factor, knits like the t-shirt jersey fabric I use absorb more color than woven fabrics. The hardest to dye are probably heavy laces/crochets, because the fibers are twisted tight in some places and looser in others, so the fabric doesn't absorb the color evenly. But all cotton will take on some color if you use effective mordanting methods. Hope that helps!
I've done alum and then soy milk afterwards, i had amazing results with black elderberries and Brennnessel (don't know the word English sorry im from Germany 😅) buuut I've never done so much compared testing, it would be very interesting to me to see. Also what are the results with different tannins?
There are so many different options I still want to test. Definitely how different tannin sources compare. I just don't know, till I do a test comparing them. That's really cool to hear that you combined alum and soy milk mordanting and got good results! That's really interesting!
The general intention of using soy milk for pre-treatment is to avoid chemicals such as alum mordants. It is known that the colour does not last as long as when using mordanting chemicals, but if the fabrics are used for making clothes, for instance, they can be dyed again when they fade. I would not use anything else when using soy milk.
Hello. I absolutely LOVE this video. I've just started dyeing and I dyed Logwood onto cotton. I use Aluminium acetate to mordant, but didn't use a tannin before the mordant. I'm concerned the logwood won't last long. Could I put the dyed cotton into a tannin bath, mordwith alum and dye again? Or is it too late for tannin at this point? Thank you x
Thank you for watching! I think if you redo the whole process again (tannin + alum acetate + dye again) yes the color would last longer. But the color you get will also be darker than what it looks like now, since you will be layering it on top of the color it already absorbed. It's really up to you if you want to keep the color as is or redo the process. If this is an item you plan to use yourself, you could just use it for now, and if it fades, you could redye it with the addition of tannin later on, once it has become faded.
Hi this is amazing thank you so much, i am doing art project and definitely using tannins pre-mordanting from the start Question - chalk is obligatory, what would happen withouth it, did you try? especially im interested in light-fastness
Hi, I am happy you enjoyed the video! The reason for the chalk... metal salt mordants like Aluminum Acetate are acidic. Soaking the fibers in these mordants makes the ph of the fibers acidic. Chalk is alkaline (or basic), so soaking the fibers in chalk after the mordant bath brings the ph of the fibers back to neutral. Natural dyes are affected by acidity, some dyes give you a slightly different color in more acidic conditions, and some natural dyes get completely destroyed in acidic conditions. You can intentionally shift the colors you get with acids, but most natural dyes just do better and give you longer lasting color in neutral conditions.
As this video shows, that depends on the dye. Different dyes work better with different mordants. Pretreating fabric with tannin does improve the color fastness of all the dyes though, so definitely do that.
These test are very confusing because lightfast testing is done way longer than a few hours and the mordanted fabrics should be left over night once held at temp for an hour….then rinsed well and then dried fully before trying to dye with natural plant dyes… you also did not add acid to get the many other colours that can come from a low PH.
This is how I designed my lightfastness experiment. It doesn't have to be done any particular way. After mordanting, fabric can be dried and dyed later, but it doesn't need to be. It can be dyed right away. I could have done more testing with adding acid... but this is how I did my experiment this time... also I have a limited number of containers. There's always more experimenting that can be done.
@@chromaticnature actually lightfastness testing is done in a particular way… to get correct results…. Have you seen the book- The Art and Science of Natural Dyes Principles, Experiments and Results By: Joy Boutrup, Catharine Ellis. It may be available at your local library…. It is the Bible for many expert plant dyers.
@@jdmosaics I certainly agree here. They explain the Michel Garcia method with all recipes. On the other hand, it's fun to make own experiments and is also a way of learning.
Yes, absolutely. Also, making the dyebath more concentrated by using more of the dye will make the colors more intense, and leaving the fabric in the dyebath longer will in most cases give you a richer color.
It depends on what you dye with. If you overdye the same colour it can intensify but leaving it longer also. If you overdye with a different dye it can change the colour by the obvious colours over each other but also the combination ..so like if you do some leaves and then use a modifier afterwards it can change the colour from rich brown to dark grey for example. The modifier could be a mordant like iron oxide alum etc or a dye itself. It's so unpredictable. I did one where the leafe became rich brown and I thought that was cool so overdyed the whole peice but the other leaves were different leaves and they went a harsh grey colour which I was then sad i lost the lovely brown. So always do a small test first before plunging the whole thing in and regretting it like me! I guess the different things just react differently together.
