Mordant Monday

Botanical Colors is an immigrant company. I experienced hearing the stories of my mother and father who were stripped of their constitutional rights and incarcerated for three years in US concentration camps during World War II. They were US citizens. They too, were taken away and “detained” because the government didn’t like the way they looked and where they came from. The events occurring in Minnesota and Maine (and not to forget LA, Chicago, and other US cities) are profoundly disturbing to me. Botanical Colors stands in fierce, grieving solidarity with our communities in Minnesota and Maine who are facing escalating … Read more

It’s winter, and many of us have taken up knitting and crocheting during the cooler weather. While I’m thinking about knitting, my mind wanders to mordanting (of course), and some of the questions we’ve received from curious dyers.   This Mordant Monday, I thought I’d start with some common questions when mordanting changes the hand feel and quality of wool fibers. The natural dye process uses a lot of heat, and a fair amount of handling: stirring, squeezing, rinsing.  It’s easy for wool to react to all of this and become rougher feeling, even felted!  Check out this week’s Mordant … Read more

Here’s a round up of mordant questions from the community! Do I need to rinse mordants before dyeing? We rinse aluminum potassium sulfate mordanted fibers lightly before proceeding to the dye pot. We rinse aluminum acetate mordanted fibers lightly after we’ve completed the calcium carbonate dunging step. We rinse aluminum sulfate and tannin mordanted fibers lightly after the aluminum sulfate step. We rinse aluminum triformate mordanted fibers after the mordant step. We rinse iron mordanted fibers well after the iron mordanting step. How do I increase the amount of mordant on something that’s already been previously mordanted? We’ve had good … Read more

Even as the weather cools and the days get shorter, we are still in the dye pots and love the ease of aluminum triformate for mordanting wool. Aluminum triformate is another alum mordant, and we’ve adapted a couple of recipes to create a mordant method that’s a little different than our standard hot water techniques. Very simply, we create a mordant container or bucket and mix the aluminum triformate mordant with cold water. We then use that bucket and add skeins of clean wool yarn to it and let it soak overnight or longer. Then, when we’re ready to use … Read more

This week’s tannin exploration focuses on Myrobalan. I changed it up a bit this week by using our mordanted cotton bandana 6-pack as the base for exploring myrobalan. The convenience was a pleasant surprise and the colors came out beautiful. Myrobalan is a traditional cellulose tannin pre-treatment and dye, and used in Ayurvedic and traditional medicine. It’s an important color and used frequently in India and Southeast Asia. Myrobalan imparts a light yellow on cotton with a subtle light brown undertone, making it an ideal foundation for color overdyeing, and indigo combinations. Like our other examples, when combined with other … Read more