Mordanting Cellulose Fibres

I was reading Deb Bamfords blog, A History of Colour, today and her post was about mordanting cellulose fibres. This prompted me write about some mordanting I did earlier this year with my friend Lorraine.

Those of you who visit Pure Tinctoria at Woolfest and Wonderwool Wales will know Lorraine as my very able helper. I wanted to reward Lorraine for all the help she gives me at these events and won't take a penny in recompense. Knowing she likes makeing quilts, last year I gave her a dyeing kit and cotton fabric for her birthday, and we got together to do the mordanting.

Now, I'm a passionate advocate for wool, British in particular, so I had to get out all my books to check how to do the mordanting properly! I knew I could do it in a one stage process, using aluminium acetate, but Lorraine wanted to do it "traditionally" with the everything in her "kit". So we opted to follow the alum, tannin, alum process. The tannin component was Amber-M (Oak Gall).

I was really impressed with the fabulous colours we got. They are so rich.

This image is of the colours before Lorraine pressed the fabric, but even then they are really beautiful. From Left to Right they are:
Ganges (Dhak), Amazon (Annatto), Rhine-M (Red Lac) and Rhine-S (Purple Lac).

Clay Cross Lace and Textile Celebration Day

Hi all

on Saturday I was invited to the above event in Derbyshire. In the morning I did a natural dye extracts demonstration and produced the lovely hanks and tops you can see on the right.
The hanks were 95% Blue Face Leicester with a 5% nylon binder and the tops were Shetland.
From the right:
Hank 1 - an immersion bath of Lodhra Bark (Amber-L).
Hank 2 - I painted this one with Annatto (Amazon) and Red Lac (Rhine-M).
Tops 1 - an immersion bath of a mix of Annatto and Red Lac.
Hank 3 - painted with Madder (Indus), Acacia Gum (Caspian) and Kamala (Basant).
Tops 2 - I painted this one with Madder (Indus), AcaciaGum (Caspian) and Myrobalan (Kango).
Tops 3 - this lovely baby pink was an immersion bath of 2% Red Lac (Rhine-M).
Tops 4 - a lovely soft lemon yellow from a 2% immersion bath of Marigold (Ambrosia).
Tops 5 - this is a baby alpaca and bleached tussah silk top painted with Madder (Indus) and Myrobalan (Kango) .
Hank 4 - painted with Madder (Indus), Myrobalan (Kango) and Rhubarb Root (Desert).
Tops 6 - painted with Annatto and Red Lac.

In the afternoon I tutored a Design for the Terrified Master Class. Altogether a very enjoyable day!

Gift Idea No 11! or my brains getting sore!

Oh, dear, my plan to blog every day with a new gift idea is sadly falling by the wayside. It's not that I can't think of ideas for all your "fibrey friends", it's just that I can't think of any more really exciting ideas.

Well that's not quite true. I've come up with some cracking ideas, but they will take time to put together, and times what I don't have!

We'd love to provide some naturally dyed warps for those weavers who don't like making them themselves, either because they don't have the time or the inclination, but want something that little bit different. I'd love the hear from you, as to whether this is something you'd like to see in the UK. There are a number of companies in the US who sell pre-dyed and made up warps, but we haven't been able to find any here, so I'm commissioning Jane Deane to dyes some for me for the New Year, but that's a month or more away.

In the mean time, those of you who do like dyeing why not treat yourself to the Rivers Collection, which includes 10g Amazon (Annatto), 25g Ganges (Dhak), 25g Indus (Madder), 25g Nile (Natural Indigo), 25g Rhine-M (Red Lac) and 25g Rhine-S (Purple Lac) and all instructions.

This collection is now only £20.50 and represents good value for money for such a lovely collection of colours.

Hot News!

Hi all

I wanted to let you know some exciting news. Five of Pure Tinctoria's natural dye extracts gave been given their Global Organic Textile Standard (GOTS) which is really wonderful and the remaining dyes are due to get their GOTS in the next few months, so keep an eye out for that post, too.

The five dyes are Amazon (Annatto), Amber-M (Oak Gall), Indus (Madder), Kango (Myrobalan) and Thar (Cutch).

We have also been able to reduce the price of Amazon and Indus recently so please got to the Pure Tinctoria website for details.