A couple of years ago, there was an article in Spin-off Magazine about some extract dyes from a company in India; Sams’ Vegetable Dyes. Two of them were said to be extracted from indigo. The extraction method is proprietary but as oxalic acid is listed on the dyes; presumably it is similar to that used for saxon blue with sulfuric acid.
I experimented with the dyes on wool (10-12%) weight of goods. The yarns are mordanted. The smaller skeins at 10% wog potassium alum sulfate; the larger skeins with 20% potassium alum sulfate and 5 % cream of tartar. The reason for the difference in mordanting is the subject of another post but the wools are different; test wool skeins versus cormo wool and require different mordanting strategies.
I did not add anything other than the dye to the pots.
Navy blue and forest green text wool skeins
Navy blue on cormo
Forest green on cormo (still wet) 12.5% wog
A comparison between the navy blue and caribbean ( the latter was painted so a bit light).
November 30, 2015 at 11:29 am |
Hi I wanted to ask a question. Is Indigo recipe [of Michel Garcia] requires coverage of a voted off, to prevent oxygen ingress color?
November 30, 2015 at 1:07 pm |
I think you are asking if the Michel Garcia recipe needs to be covered so oxygen doesn’t get in. The short answer to this is yes. When you set up the vat, you keep it covered except when you are stirring it up which you do once a day.