Natural Dye on Protein Fiber

If you've ever been interested in natural dye, you may come to hit a wall. If you're like me; the tutorial is too vague, the library doesn't have the exact book with the process you're looking for, the books the author suggests are at minimum $20 a pop, and you wonder if they will even answer the deep quell you have for a natural dying.

This is a culmination of the last six months soaking up how-to's and DIY's, and day dreaming on Pinterest. It's safe to say this is complete uneducated opinion. That being said, this is the process depicted and the results achieved.

Of course, I didn't write anything down and I'm probably annoying every researcher, teacher, copyright protagonist, or the like without citing the works.

Technically a wool-blend will be dyed using avocado. This technique *should* work for a variety of naturally sourced dyes and protein fibers.

Bare Yarn Hanks

Mild detergent

Alum Powder

Scale

Avocado dye (possible Instructable to come)

Heat-Conducting Container with Closure (safe for use with your heat source)

Heat Source (safe for use with your container)

Stirring Utensil

Let's not make this difficult.

Wash the yarn with a mild detergent.

Scouring serves to remove excess grease, hair, dirt from your yarn. Anything that will keep the dye from adhering to the yarn

If you would appreciate more instruction:

1. Fill the container (sink) with liberally soapy, warm water. *
2. Gently soak the hanks completely. Don't run water directly onto the hanks.
3. Empty and fill sink, gently washing hanks until the water runs soapless.

What material you are dying matters. What was used in this Instructable and other extra words:

Two hanks of sport weight of fine merino wool, baby alpaca and mulberry silk. One hank of fingering weight super wash merino and nylon. Wool is used for felting in some instances. I'm going to suggest something crazy... DON'T touch your wool yarn. Even pouring water abrasively over the yarn will begin to pull fibers away from the yarn.

The yarn was purchased online, supposedly, responsibly-harvested. But that's a different article all together.

*Where water is concerned, pH is important but you don't have to go that intense. It's worth noting if you don't get desired results.

Basically:

1. Calculate mordant needed
2. Dissolve mordant
3. Mordant fiber
4. Allow to age mordant

Unnecessary Content:

Natural dyes, applied without mordant, tend to lose intensity. There is a reason they resorted to making less natural dyes, am I right? A mordant is meant to prepare the fibers to receive dye. There are several ways to effect how the dye takes to the yarn. Resources available are rich in information about mordant. Alum powder is a staple for natural dyers and is often mentioned when mordanting protein fibers. There is difference of opinion when it comes to how much alum powder to use. Aging the mordant and material, is not a very commonly shared technique. It came from the FAQ of a seemingly authoritative website. It can't hurt, right? (I mean, maybe it rips the yarn apart and then, I have wasted all my time and money up to this point.)

What is depicted in this Instructable:

1. Weigh yarn with scale (300 g) then, measure 10% of material weight (30 g)
2. Dissolve alum in just enough water to cover the materials. Bring just about to boil and remove from heat.
3. Gently submerge hanks into alum water. Cover pot and let cool to room temperature.
4. Store wet yarn in alum water for 3-5 days.

Extra information for informed decision making:

Ten percent weight of fiber was used versus the commonly recommended eight percent. (The scale used was made to measure under 10 pounds not under 100 grams.) A lot of tutorials will suggest boiling the water. I disagree. Personal experience dictates this makes those pesky little hairs pop out on your strands. Agitation coming from any source will disrupt the smoothness of the finished product. Covering the pot was important because it would most likely keep the barely submerged hanks from drying on the uppermost strands. Pouring in water enough to soak the fibers was a thought to prevent drying out on the top strands of hanks. I have disposable hotel pans that I save for dying purposes only. This is what the hanks were stored in during their extended fridge weekend get-away.

GENTLY.

This is where a lot of that felting can be avoided. IMHO

If this were a meme it would be the scene in The Croods where Grug is slapping the wall with the red paint saying "bad." Heat. Bad. Movement. Bad. Agitation. Bad!

Basic steps:

1. Place dye and yarn in pot
2. Bring to just about a simmer (remembering movement is the enemy here)
   1. On my electric stove, I used both parts of the two part burner med/low 2.6
   2. As it sounded close to a simmer, the heat to 2 and turned off the larger part of the burner
3. Cool to room temperature
4. Remove hanks and squeeze out excess
5. Lay flat to dry, readjusting as necessary until completely dry

In this Instructable:

• The dye had molded, should have taken the extra step to can the MASON JAR full of dye. SMH!
• The avocado had what looked like sediment, big particles that had settled into the bottom. Attempted to leave as much of this out of the pot as possible.
• The sock weight will be used in a citrus peel dye, hoping to be in the works.

Here you need patience. Important to note that any color that washes out of the yarn, however disappointing, was inevitably not bonded to the fibers.

1. Squeeze excess liquid out of the fiber.
2. Fill 'bath' and add hank
3. Push down gently on fiber
4. Soak for a few minutes Repeat 1-4

Repeat until water runs clear (or nearly clear). Repeat again adding mild soap to your hands on step 3. Repeat until water is free of suds. Optional; Repeat again adding conditioner on step 3. Repeat until waters runs free of conditioner.

The color photo's from step 4 are before washing. The black and white photos are to show the differences in value of color. This is a typical experience dying hanks in this way; the tighter you twist them the increased likelihood of 'holidays.' Note that they way they were twisted once during mordant step. This could account for uneven dying, as the mordant attracts the dye to the fiber.
While I have been planning to dye this, I had felt stress not knowing exactly what to do. My intent was to dissolve that in myself and hopefully you feel that you could dye in this way with no qualms.

I hope you enjoyed my method. I welcome constructive criticism and thank you for making it to the end.

As my friend often says as I tell her I'm knitting.

"Knit one, purl one."