Indigo Dyeing

If you've come looking for pictures today, I'm afraid I'm going to leave you sorely disappointed. Yes, I did remember to bring my camera. I even had a fully charged battery and a mostly empty compact flash card. But the camera didn't come out until after the rubber gloves got put away. It was too difficult for me to be involved and be a photographer at the same time.

Julie and I got there about an hour after we were supposed to as a result of the car troubles I mentioned yesterday. The dyeing experience took place in Toni's kitchen, which was filled to the brim with women ready to learn about Indigo dyeing. By that time the dye stocks had been made, the dye pots were de-oxygenizing and the fiber had been prepped for the experience. Julie and walked in the door and were given two skeins of yarn to dye. One was a natural white and the other was a natural grey yarn (I don't know what kind of sheep either of them came from); I think the point was to see how the dye went on a white wool and how it worked in a situation that was more like overdyeing.

So before learning any of the chemistry, Julie and I got to dunk our skeins into the Indigo bath and watch the magic happen.

The interesting thing about Indigo is that under the conditions where the dyeing occurs, the dye is actually a greenish color instead of the deep blue you expect it to be. It has to be a fairly basic solution (about pH 10) and for dyeing wool a temperature of about 120 degrees Farenheit is required. And the goal is to keep the dye bath from holding too much oxygen. The yarn can only become dyed when the conditions in the dyepot are reducing ones. For a really nice series of pictures that show the set up, you might want to check out this bit that was posted on the Yarn Harlot's blog last fall.

What's so amazing, even if you have studied chemistry a long time ago, is watching that skein come out of the pot a greenish yellow color (after about 4 minutes) and change to a deep blue as it hits the air (i.e. gets exposed to the oxygen). The transformation continues as it sets for the next 20 minutes or so. And then you repeat the process as many times as you want to get the depth of color you like. Pretty easy stuff. The thing that was even more amazing than the actual dyeing process was that countertops, towels, buckets and spoons that got subjected to dye did not take up the dye at all. If you've ever played with Lanaset dyes, you know that anything they touch changes color permanently. Indigo is much more forgiving. If the reducing conditions don't exist, the dye doesn't do anything you would regret later.

After you get your yarn or fiber to the color you want to get it to, you need to let it set for 24 hours to fully oxydize. Then you rinse and dry and get to sit back and enjoy the final product.

Left: Natural Wool, Right: Natural 50% Wool, 50% Silk

The skein on the left was the natural colored skein that Toni provided. The skein on the right was a skein of the silk/wool blend that I got from my mom for Christmas. It didn't get quite as many trips to the dye pot, so it's lighter than the other skein. The shiny quality comes from the silk. Initially, before the rinsing, I didn't much like the feel of the wool/silk skein, but now that it's washed up it has a much more pleasant hand and I really like the faded denim color. I like the darker color, too. But I have to be honest, if something is blue there's a good chance that I will like it, an denimy blues are my favorite.

What happened to the grey skein? It's still sitting in my bathtub drying and isn't yet suitable for photographing. It turned out a dark grey blue like the dark washes you see on a lot of jeans these days. I'll try to get it into a photo once it's finished drying.

All in all, if you want to try some natural dyeing, Indigo seems like a good and easy introduction to it. Over all, it's a pretty non-toxic process (at least compared to chemical dyes) and it isn't hard to monitor the dye bath and get some very lovely results. Beyond that, it's also pretty non-toxic to your kitchen (except for the smell, the thiourea that's used as a reducing agent has sulfur which creates a little bit of a vague rotten egg odor) which is a real plus if you wanted to try this with older children. Julie and I left with some dyestock of our own, and the chemicals for stocking the dyepot. You never know when you'll see a whole rash of Indigo dyeing breaking out around here now!