What Is It?

Myra Robertson suggested this photographic subject when we were walking the grounds at Blue Sky Water.  It must be a kind of fungus on the underside of a tree branch on the hillside.  Sometimes fungus makes good dyestuffs.  We talked about holding a natural dye workshop in November or in Spring.

Bamboo Osage Orange Socks

Bamboo Socks Dyed With Osage Orange Natural Dye

Since you saw the Osage Orange Chiffon Scarf yesterday, you can contrast the color difference with these Osage Orange dyed socks.  These were actually batched for a much longer time (ie over night or all day, vs. about two hours) and yet the color is more brilliant on silk than bamboo.  Plant fibers are great because they are vegan and don't have as much impact on the food chain.  But plant fibers just don't take color the way wool and silk do.  These ladies socks were custom ordered and I can make you a pair in some pastel tone such as peach/salmon or soft yellow as here.  Just send me an email or reach me at etsy by sending a conversation.

Osage Orange Dyed Silk Chiffon Ladies Scarf

Silk Scarf, dyed using Osage Orange

Dyeing using natural dyes is just an unpredictable adventure.  Here is an amazing piece.  I was dyeing a pair of bamboo custom socks for a friend in Oklahoma Food Cooperative, and had this osage orange dye made up so I thought I would test the results on silk and had a chiffon scarf that I could use.  The socks came out buttery, khaki and sort of lighter than I would have preferred.  (One can never be very unhappy with bamboo socks because they are just incredibly soft and comfy.)  But the scarf came out a rich yellow.  Actually, this outdoors pic doesn't show how bright and golden the color is.  Its darker yellow than lemons, and has subtle shading.  It reminds me that no two fibers will strike color the same.  Protein fibers always give more pow.  And though it is fussy and hard to work with, causing lots of waste and errors that cannot be corrected because the silk is delicate... it remains my favorite medium because there is always a surprise.

Mudme Natural-Dyed Scarf

Mudme Natural Dyed Scarf

Mudme is a Thai technique for making great multi-colored tiedyes, by coloring bound objects which are then removed.  You can see I used a roundish shaped object (a rock) for the tie on this one, and instead of the traditional multi center, I used a soy wax resist to keep the white silk.  It is an imperfect process, and that is what makes this work so very intriguing.  Each scarf is a work of art, unlike any other.  There are so many uncontrollable variables which are interdependent.  For instance, the Madder Root dyestuff I was using had been reheated several times and was almost dust and twigs in the bottom of the pot when I sat it outside.  Then it rained and I thought for sure I'd get pale tones because the root was both exhausted and diluted.  But no.  You never know.  This one came out bright and just the color of fresh salmon.  Was it because oak flowers had fallen in?  Who knows!  There is a huge amount of serendipity in the process, and that's fun!

Silk, hand-dyed with natural madder root using vegan soy wax resist in a nontraditional mudme technique.  This scarf will be for sale at Oklahoma Food Coop and perhaps on etsy.  To buy it you can notify me by email.  $18 and that's a bargain!

Sanskrit Gibberish Scarf

Soy Batik Silk Scarf

I can't write in sanskrit, so I just scribbled something that I thought seemed a little bit like sanskrit when I was doing the soy wax batik resist for this scarf.  Here's sort of a how-to:  Start with a silk scarf and prewash it.  I like to give mine a strong scrub in the washer, but avoid soap or detergent.  Let it dry flat or hanging.  Then it is ready for the resist.  "Resist" is a term used for making part of the fabric where it won't soak up any color.  You melt soy wax and apply it to the scarf.  Where ever the wax soaks in, it will keep the fibers from taking any color.  Next, apply alum.  I keep a batch of alum made up for this purpose and made mine a year ago, so I don't recall the recipe.  It can be looked-up online.  Allow your article to dry in the air.  You can see already that this process takes several days.  The next day, place your scarf in the dyepot.  For Rose Madder as in this one, I made up a dye batch several days ago.  I happened to leave it under the roof dripline and it got some rainwater in it.  Every item and every dyebath is different, so there is always a huge range of possibilities .... all of which are uncontrollable.... when you do this.  You can gently and slowly heat Rose Madder Root dye bath, but don't let it boil.  It should steam and simmer but not boil.  Boiling is very bad for silk.  When you've achieved the color you like, turn off the heat.  Next day it will have cooled, and you can squeeze the dye out of the scarf and hang up the scarf some place on a towel where it can get bone-dry.

  

By now, you're going to start seeing clumps of soy wax flaking off, but that is OK.  Now, for the ethical question:  Do you wash it in the washer in a lingerie bag, or hand wash it in the sink?  Either way, use hot water of about 140 degrees to melt the wax.  Choose to do this in the drain you would like to stopp upp.  I like to alternate, hoping that there's enough routine family traffic in those drains to avoid a bad plugging.  Allow your silk scarf to dry completely.  There are two alternative methods for the step of ironing away the remaining soy wax.  You could place the scarf between layers of tissue paper (white.... not purple) and iron on the silk setting.  Or you could gum up your iron anyway by not using paper to absorb the wax.  I use the latter method (having taken a vow of ironinglessness many years ago which I have faithfully kept).  But if you actually use your iron like an ironing person, then don't be like me.  Otherwise your spouse will have strange blobs of what only you know is soy wax on his shirt, and you'll feel remoreseful but never admit you done it.  This code of silence can damage even the strongest love----  I know.  Four husbands and I am still making mistakes.

Now your scarf should be colorfast, clean and ready to wear for some quirky adventure..... geocaching?  Time travel?  Visiting a client in jail?  Probably best not to wear such a scarf to jail, as it would make a fine hostage leash if things went badly.

This scarf is for sale, $18 and can be purchased by emailing ktibbits@lrec.org .  It will probably be available thru Oklahoma Food Cooperative and on etsy soon, so you might look for it in one of my shops by clicking on one of the images in the righthand margin of this blog page.

Cedar Apple Rust Fungus Scarf

 

Cedar Apple Rust Fungus Scarf

For some reason, this picture refuses to permit itself to be centered.  Maybe it is because the scarf comes from way off in left field.  I mentioned to The Oklahoma Forage Ahead Yahoo Group that I was using natural dyes, and moderator (and forage guru) Jackie Dill wondered if it would be possible to use those bright neon orange "starballs" of cedar-apple rust fungus for dyeing.  I'd never considered it, although I have a funny story about hunting for dyeing mushrooms.... so I'll digress:

One day Dennis and I were going to split the yard-mowing chore.  He did his half and turned the mower over to me.  I had only made one sweep of mowing down the hill when I ran across some interesting-looking mushrooms under the peach tree, so I stopped mowing and started getting them ready to see if they were dye mushrooms.  It turns out that they yielded a pale golden dye when extracted with 100-proof  grain alcohol.  I got so distracted that at the end of that day, my mower was still down in the far end of the yard and I never went back to it.  He now kids me about that.

Anyway, on Saturday it happened to be perfect weather for gathering cedar-apple rust fungus, and I had plenty on some little cedar trees that had popped up in my former garden spot, so I made up a batch of dye and this interesting scarf is the result.  It has a parchment or marbled look, and is made of sheer habotai silk.

It was set with alum and heat, so I think the color will be permanent... but it is my first such experiment thus I can't guarantee it to be color fast after extended periods in bright light or harsh detergent.  Best to just hand wash gently and dry it on a towel.  (It was machine washed thoroughly to remove any traces of the original material--- although I'm sure the vodka did its magic in sterilizing it, also.  

This scarf will be listed for purchase with Oklahoma Food Co-op in the May order cycle, $18.  If you'd like to buy it for Mother's Day, email ktibbits@lrec.org and I'll take it off listing and send it to you.

Adventures in Natural Dye Methods - Rose Madder Scarf

Silk Charmeuse Scarf

Soy Wax Resist Batik,

Hand-Dyed in Natural Rose Madder

Oklahoma Food Coop is full of fun people, and this month among my co-op orders was a request for natural-dyed bamboo socks.  I've dyed bamboo, and it is my favorite type of sock because these socks wick better than acrylic but have the same level of softness.  Like cotton, only better.  So, I was up for the challenge to create hand-dyed socks using Madder Roots.  Trouble is, every fiber takes dye differently, and with natural dyes the results vary from wildly unpredictable to extremely unpredictable.  The socks made from the same batch of madder roots were a softer pinky salmon in final colour.  I had hoped to list this scarf earlier during co-op's order cycle, but with taxes and all I just tossed it into the Madder Root for an experiment.

Silk scarves are tough for a couple of reasons.  Long skinny things don't wash by machine very easily.  Um, silk hardly is machine washable at all because silk is delicate.  It must not get too hot in the natural dye batch, which has to simmer but not boil over 2 hours in a process that takes about 24 hours from start to finish.  Add batik wax, and that's not only slow and likely to give a resist failure... but also clog the plumbing with wax.

Those are just some of the reasons that I was so pleased to produce this first natural dyed scarf from madder root and soy wax.  It has a delightfully uneven shadowy color tone, and the wax held up fine.  (No comment on the plumbing.  I'm the plumber these days my own self.)

This gorgeous silk scarf will be for sale in time for Mother's Day on Island Retreat... click any item in the Island Retreat Etsy gallery to see everything there.  It will be posted in a few days, or call me for direct purchase 918 797 5016, about $18. 

Madder Root is a natural plant root.  It doesn't seem to be indigenous as a Cherokee dye plant... Cherokees used a different root which is rare and sacred with a beautiful flower.  I don't dye with the Cherokee red plant because it is reputed to be a cancer remedy and I think it should be preserved in the wild for this more important purpose.  Dyeing clothing and accessories takes plenty of roots, unlike dyeing basket reed which takes far less wild flower medicine plant roots.  I like Madder because they say you can twist the shade depending upon what you add to the roots.  And I've heard it does not require a mordant.  I use Alum to presoak and Cream of Tartar to balance the PH so the molecules form a chemical bond.  You may have Madder Root in your paintbox, for it is the precursor to Alizarin Crimson... my favorite red in oils.

Today, Madder isn't used because analine dyes have taken the place of these older colors.  I love it because I know it is a part of the color rainbow of centuries past.  Its use dates back to the Pakistan area B.C. and is common widely around the world as recently as the 1900s.  How nice to know that women in Chinese silk wore this color for more than a thousand years!

Walnut-Dyed Chief's Quilt

I made this fun quilt quite a few years back, and it won an award in the Cherokee National Holiday Quilt Show.  You can see that some of the fabrics are satin.  Satin is not a dyer's cloth because it doesn't absorb and hold color without being shocked.  Um, that means "runined."  So look at the shiny strips-- those are the commercial satin.  The flat strips are hand dyed with walnut hulls.  The cool thing about walnuts, you already know if you've ever picked up big dog food sized bags of them in the fall--- they stain.  On a nice Autumn day when Kanny and Kaleb were little, our Saturday fun was to station a drum and wheelbarrow in the yard, and practice throwing walnuts into the barrel from wherever we found them in the yard.  (It soon became apparent that walnuts may go IN to a wheelbarrow, but if so they'll probably knock out at least as many or more walnuts in doing so.)  So there we were at the end of the day, with brown stained hands that nothing could clean except time.

Later in the winter a pickle barrel full of walnuts was sitting under the eave and got filled with rainwater.  THAT is a stinky mess.  I took a bunch of recycled sheets and jammed them down in the water, covering with a lid, and let them soak till Spring.  I didn't use any mordant or fixer, and I didn't precondition them with alum or anything.  In fact, they had been washed with soap on multiple occasions and were plain white sheets.

I was delighted when I pulled them out and saw the subtle shading.  Some places were foxed from being at water level.  Some places were paler or darker.  Even some sheets took the color better than others.  It is amazing to get disparate results like on these strips when using basically the same technique, right down to putting them in the same dyepot.  We can guess that there may have been a difference in the cotton content, with some sheets having more synthetic fibers... although I thought they were all cotton.  Even bleaching in a former life may have influenced the color variance.  The circle and the color "clouds" are all things that showed up in the natural dyeing process.

A cool thing about walnut dyeing is that walnuts are plentiful--- you just use the hulls and all.  And it can be done long and slow without a rigorous process.  Or it can be done quickly over a boil with stirring for more of a vat-dyed outcome (even coloration).  I suspect that temperature influences color intensity, as do the amount of water mixed with the hulls and the age of the hulls.  Green hulls would give a silvery champagne tone and oozy black hulls would give darker tones.  Basket reed dyers will attest to the fact that different natural fibers, whether it be fabric or reed, wood or wool, will take the dye differently.  Some fibers such as silk will be hard to color without using some technique to grab and bite the color.  Silk is just hard to dye sometimes.

I think this quilt was commercially quilted by Wavalene at Living Designs in Tahlequah and it is probably lo-loft batted with a pantogram design perhaps that Wavalene has created.

I was experimenting with pintucking when I worked on this quilt.  I had seen a beautiful dress of Rachel Martin in a Cherokee art book.  I think it is in a museum in Tennessee.  Rachel Martin was a distant relative and of a notable Cherokee family in history, and her spectacular dress had a lot of pintucking and pleats.  Here's a detail view showing the informal pintucking on the header and footer borders of this quilt:

Doesn't the marbling from walnut dye and the funky pintucking make for an elegant and complex visual experience?  This quilt is sort of plain but it has interesting visual and tactile textures.