Natural Dyeing-Planning & Fiber Preparation

Before anyone becomes alarmed by my cover photo, my chickens never go into the stew pot! Instead, this is a photo of one of my free-ranging gals checking out the dye pots drying on the lawn.

My last post, My Dye Studio, talked about participating in a 10-week online Natural Dyeing Study Group at the School of Sweet Georgia. I gave you a little tour of my dye studio and the equipment and tools I use for dyeing.

Since then, I have been planning the project to ultimately use what I will dye and preparing the fibers by scouring and mordanting.

The Project

Project: Color Gamp Placemats

Structure: Plain Weave

Finished Size: Aiming for ~14" x 20", hemmed. (4 placemats)

I’m planning a plain weave color gamp fabric to be used for placemats. My design is inspired by the woven Color Gamp Sample in Season 2, Episode 8 of the Jane Stafford Online Weaving Guild.

Color Gamp - A color gamp has color stripes in the warp that are crossed in the same color order by the weft threads. The gamp contains blocks of pure color (ex. yellow weft threads cross yellow warp threads) and blocks of blended colors (ex. yellow weft threads cross red warp threads). A typical reason to weave a color gamp is to experiment with warp and weft color combinations that will and won’t work together for a future project. However, a gamp also produces a lovely fabric in its own right. Here is an article that describes color gamp in more detail.

Warp: 10/2 cotton

6 natural dye colors (40 ends of each of 4 colors, 30 ends of each of 2 colors)
natural as the divider between blocks (120 ends)
Total warp ends 340
Sett: 22-24 epi (still deciding)
Warp length: 4 yards

Weft: 10/2 cotton (same colors as above)

I chose 10/2 cotton for both warp and weft because I have lots of undyed 10/2 cotton in my stash. It should make a sturdy cloth at a sett in the range of 22 to 24 ends per inch (epi). To achieve my desired width for the placemats, I’ve calculated I’ll need 340 ends.

The gamp will have six dyed colors on a natural background. I chose my colors with an Autumn palette in mind.

Weld (extract) - bright yellow
Madder (root, my garden) - orange/red
Cochineal (whole) - red/purple
Logwood (extract) - purple
Quebracho (extract) - coral, red/brown
Black Walnut (whole, my garden) - brown

I have dyed with black walnut and a little with madder and cochineal, but never on cotton. I’ve also dyed yellow with marigolds, but I’m going to try weld for comparison this time. Logwood and quebracho will be a new experience.

Skein Preparation

To figure out how much 10/2 cotton I would need for each color, I had to do a little math.

Calculations for DYED yarn amounts (yards & grams)

Warp Yardage:

2 colors - 30 ends x 4 yards = 120 yards
4 colors - 40 ends x 4 yards = 160 yards

As the fabric will be a balanced weave, I calculated the amount (yards) of each color I need for the warp and then doubled that amount to account for the weft.

Total Yardage (Warp & Weft):

2 colors - 240 yards each color
4 colors - 320 yards each color

Convert to weight (grams):

10/2 cotton = 4200 yd/453 gm or 9.3 yd/gm

2 colors - 26 grams
4 colors - 34 grams

I rounded up to 50 gm of 10/2 cotton for each color. This will make the calculation for mordant and dye amounts easy, give me plenty of wiggle room for weaving, and allow some opportunity for playing with modifiers and over-dyeing.

I decided to wind off the cotton from the cone onto a niddy-noddy. One wrap around my niddy-noddy is 60".

More math for the math lovers:

10/2 cotton is 9.3 yd/gm. I want 50 gm skeins. 50gm x 9.5 yd = 465 yd/skein

convert to inches: 36 x 465 yd = 16740"

16740" / 60" = 279 wraps around the niddy-noddy.

How did it work? 279 wraps and it weighed 51 gm. Pretty darn close!

Tip - I used stitch markers to count off intervals of 50 threads, just in case I got interrupted :-0

In addition to the six 50 gram skeins, I also have a handful of thrums from the warp end waste of past weavings. I’ll use these to experiment with mordants, exhaust baths, and overdyeing.

Total weight of fiber (WOF) 300 gm (skeins) + 35 gm (thrums) = 335 grams

Scouring

Scouring washes the fibers in preparation for mordanting and dyeing. It removes natural oils, waxes, and any dirt that may be present. If the fiber is not clean, the mordant and dyes will not bond to the fiber.

Cotton is a cellulose fiber. Scouring and mordanting cellulose fibers are different than protein fibers such as wool, alpaca, and silk.

There is a number of ways to scour cellulose fibers. I settled on the process below because I already had the ingredients on hand.

Synthrapol at 1 teaspoon for 100 grams of fiber.

Soda ash at 2% of the weight of fiber (WOF).

So for 335 grams of fiber, I used

Synthrapol 1 tablespoon + 1 teaspoon
Soda ash 7 gm dissolved in boiling water

To a large stainless steel pot filled with plenty of water to allow the fiber to move freely, I added the Synthrapol and the dissolved soda ash. I then add the wet fiber to the pot and slowly brought the temperature to 180°F. This took about 45 minutes on high. It’s a big pot!

The temperature was held around 180°F for 30 minutes. The best method I’ve found to do this is to turn the heat to medium-low, place a lid partially covering the pot, and check the temperature every 5 minutes or so. The water will become brown as the waxes and oils are released from the fabric.

I rinsed the fibers with cool water and then placed them back into the pot with fresh water so they would stay wet until I could continue with mordanting the next day.

It’s surprising how cloudy and discolored the water is after scouring!

Mordanting

A mordant is a substance with an affinity for the material to be dyed and the natural dye. It acts as a bond between the two, helping the dye to become permanently fixed to the fibers. If there are ten variations on how to scour, there are 100 methods and materials used to mordant.

I did a 3-step process.

Tannin Bath
- Two of my chosen natural dyes (quebracho and black walnut) already have a high tannin content, so those skeins of cotton can skip the tannin bath step. I tagged those skeins with a blue rubber band on the dye ring.
- For the other four skeins and thrums, I used Gallo tannin extract (from oak galls). I chose this as my tannin source because it has a pale, almost transparent, beige color, unlike some of the other tannins, which give red, yellow, or darker brown casts.
- For 235 grams of fiber at 8% WOF, I used 18 grams of Gallo tannin in a large pot of hot tap water.
- The fibers soaked in this bath for 24 hours.
Alum Bath
- All of the skeins were added to this bath. For 335 grams of fiber at 8% WOF, I used 27 grams of alum in a large pot of hot tap water.
- The fibers soaked in this bath for 24 hours.
Chalk Dip
- 20 grams of calcium carbonate added to 2 liters of warm water.
- Each skein and the thrums were soaked in the dip for several minutes.

Currently, the skeins are drying in the hot breeze of a South Carolina summer day. They're ready for dye color someday in the next week or so.

Stay tuned!

Debby

My Krokbragd Weaving workshop will be released tomorrow (July 7, 2021) at the School of Sweet Georgia! More on that in another post! Again, if you decide to be a subscriber at the School of Sweet Georgia, I would be grateful to use my affiliate link.