Kathy Hattori, Author at Botanical Colors

Mordant Monday: Creating Color In Tucson

We used raw dyestuffs: cochineal insects, coreopsis flowers, marigolds, extracts and two indigo vats (henna and fructose). I was very impressed how beautiful the colors came out! I was fortunate to teach in Tucson, Arizona last month for the Tucson Handweavers and Spinners Guild. This was my first time in Arizona and it was a wonderful experience. The dramatic desert landscape really commands your attention and the light just before sunset is luminous. The swatches are from a number of different dye baths and we mixed and matched colors to create 4-color palettes with an indigo dip at the end. … Read more

Mordant Monday: LIME GREEN

On this Saint Patrick’s Day, learn how to make this punchy lime green! We are pulling this exciting color back from our archives. Wink wink, you might remember it from this summer…Using weld and indigo, you can get awfully close to this punchy acid green. Natural dyes are often thought of as pastel or “soft” colors, but we’re here to help you make a hue that really packs a punch! This is the basic recipe Start with a mordanted cotton bandana, soak it in warm water for 30 minutes to thoroughly wet it out, and dip in a very light … Read more

Mordant Monday: Mordant after Dyeing?

YOU ASKED: Can I mordant after dyeing? I just returned from India, dyed a number of silk scarves and was told the I can mordant them after they have been dyed. I have been trying to find more details but have only read on your site about post-mordanting something that has already been mordanted? KATHY ANSWERED: There’s actually a technique that is practiced in Japan that is referred to as “middle mordanting”. The process is to immerse silk fabric in dye, then transfer it to a mordant bath, and then return it to the dye bath. It definitely deepens the … Read more

Mordant Monday: All of those Alums?

We had a question come in earlier this week about the differences in the variety of alum mordants we offer. Katie asks: Hello, I am wondering if it is possible to use Ammonium Aluminum Sulfate for mordanting wool? I am finding this substance in the spice section ofthe grocery store. I can’t seem to find definitive information about this and I feel confused about all the different “alums” that exist. We answered: The different alum types are basically the same mineral but they are refined differently for different purposes using a variety of chemicals. They can look different, too. For … Read more

Mordant Monday: Tannin Workshop Review

Mordanted fat quarters in iron, marigold, indigo, marigold+indigo, logwood, logwood+ indigo, logwood + marigold and logwood + marigold+ indigo. Both Cara and I taught new online workshops about tannins and natural dyes this month. Cara introduced Tannin Grayscale, a fascinating look into using iron and tannin to create a rich range of deep and moody neutrals. I had envisioned that this would be a workshop on gray, gray and more gray, but the surprise was that her techniques create some beautifully saturated shades. My workshop was Tannin Rainbow, where I concentrated on combining different tannin mordanted fabrics with natural dye … Read more

RSVP for BOTANICAL COLORS’ COMMUNITY GATHERING

Join us this week, January 24, 9am PT/Noon ET for our first ever Community Gathering. We kick off our event with the intention of welcoming you into a textile community to provide encouragement, listening and connection. We are here for each other and as act of determination and hope. To participate, click the link to RSVP and Zoom will send you the login information. Can’t wait to see you all! RSVP HERE

Mordant Monday: Dyeing without a mordant

This Mordant Monday, I want to share a little bit about my pokeberry dye adventure this past week. Those of you who know me know that I was trained to mordant nearly everything (exception: indigo). Not mordanting something that needs a mordant usually elicits a shocked, silent, but oh-so-judgey raised eyebrow, so this post is a stretch for me. The interesting thing about pokeberries is that it’s possible to get a brilliant color by using wool yarn and white vinegar. No alum mordant is used in this technique. And vinegar is not normally considered a mordant. So here we are. … Read more

Mordant Monday: Foraging Instead

Today I was supposed to write about mordanting, but I had a foraging date to scout out potential sites for our upcoming workshop with Julie Beeler, so I headed out this morning to get a sense of what we might discover during our workshop. I am a mushroom foraging novice, and will stare for a long time at the forest floor and see absolutely nothing. I simply don’t have the eyes yet to distinguish between a brown leaf and a bolete. But to my surprise, there were some mushrooms that give color that very happily announced their presence right in … Read more

More Mordant Experiments

I’m obsessed with using tannin and aluminum sulfate to create different color bases for both natural dyes and indigo. What I love about this technique is that this is a great mordant option and it’s a lot of fun to see the colors develop and take on the subtle differences between the different tannin bases. This time, we’re working with a lightweight, pre-mordanted, organic cotton suitable for stitching and quilting. We mordanted 4 fat quarters, each with a different tannin, and then tried a few dye experiments using Marigold Mix, Madder extract and Indigo. Start with our Mordanted Fat quarter … Read more

Mordant Monday: Middle Mordant Magic

In this week’s Mordant Monday, we discuss Middle Mordant. Middle Mordant is a technique that I learned about from The Art and Science of Natural Dyes. It’s considered to be a Japanese technique and is a simple way to create rich color on silk. Middle mordant uses room temperature dye baths and you can repeat the process until the fabric is the color you want. The purpose of middle mordant is to deepen the depth of shade and most of the examples I’ve seen use silk fabric and alum mordant. There are somewhat similar techniques that old dye books discuss, … Read more