FEEDBACK FRIDAY: This Week in Natural Dye Questions
This week: How much of a fresh madder root do you use??
Search Results for: walnut
MORDANT MONDAY: Do I Need To Re-Mordant To Eco Print?
We get mordant questions all the time at Botanical Colors so why not create Mordant Monday??? Got mordanting questions? Email [email protected] YOU ASKED: I have scoured the internet trying to find an answer to this question, with no luck other than to ask you 🙂 I am dyeing my fabric (scoured and mordanted with tara tannin, aluminum acetate, chalk bath) and want to eco print flowers onto the fabric afterwards. Do I re-mordant or is the previous mordant still viable after the fabric has been dyed as the water reaches 180 degrees. I use your plant extracts to dye and … Read more
How To Make Your Own Signature Black Natural Dye
Want to know how to make your very own signature black natural dye? Here’s a really good black recipe from Kathy to send you into tannin and iron experiments all day…or maybe, for the rest of your life. Black with gallo tannin, iron and logwood is a historical recipe from Europe and creates a warm black. Prior to the introduction of logwood to Europe, black was achieved through multiple baths of tannin and iron, or by overdyeing with madder, weld and woad. The basic rule of thumb with this recipe is that you can dye and continue overdyeing to achieve … Read more
You Asked, Kathy Answered: The pH of Indigo
We get lots of emails from customers about challenges with dyeing and needing Botanical Colors’ President Kathy Hattori’s help. Why not share the learning so we can all benefit? From our inboxes to you, it’s simple: You Asked, Kathy Answered. Email questions@botanicalcolors with your plea for help! YOU ASKED: I set up an indigo vat a few weeks ago using fructose and lime. I dyed a few cotton items which worked well and now I want to dye some wool and silk. I’m having trouble lowering the pH. I’ve added more fructose but the pH is still 10.9. I tried … Read more
FEEDBACK FRIDAY: This Week in Natural Dye Questions
This week: What’s all this pH talk with indigo vats and cruelty free color for yarn
Sunday Visit: Arounna Khounnoraj and the Origins of @Bookhou
Every Sunday, Botanical Colors sits down for an interview with a luminary in the natural dye, textile and art world. Grab a cup of tea and settle in to learning about someone you never knew! Catch up on all our Sunday Visits here. This week we sit down with Arounna to learn about how she got started with her husband and how she grew her amazing community to what it is today. Can you tell us your origin story? How did Bookhou begin? I finished art school with a background in sculpture and ceramics and I started doing some teaching at … Read more
The Beginner Dye Kit: Fustic Greens
Fun Facts about the Fustic in our Botanical Colors’ Beginner Dye Kit: Fustic (Chlorophora tinctoria or Maclura tinctoria) is a tall tropical hardwood that grows from Mexico to Argentina. Fustic is high in tannic acid, which makes it an ideal cotton dye. In fact, it was used in the military to dye the color khaki during World War I. On cotton, it will dye a clear gold and on silk and wool it will dye gold to brown-gold. Fustic also provides a good base for other colors: indigo overdyed with fustic creates a khaki green; combined with madder and cochineal to make oranges; and mixed with … Read more
FEEDBACK FRIDAY: Channeling Champagne on Silk
This week on FEEDBACK FRIDAY: How to channel the color of champagne on silk with a natural dye like cutch
Botanical Colors a Featured Voice on Fashion Traceability
Botanical Colors founder Kathy Hattori was recently interviewed by the New York City based apparel production and ethical design facility, Brooklyn Fashion+Design Accelerator on natural dyes and color in the fashion industry. BF+DA writer Kelly Drennan writes: “Taking transparency to the next level is traceability – a system that provides information on the farming, production, packing, distribution, transportation, and sales processes of a particular item of clothing. By reducing the difficulty of accessing this information on a product’s life cycle, traceability has the potential to increase conscious consumption.” If in fact, consumers are wanting to know more about where their … Read more
Marigold Mix Extract + 3 Color Combinations
We are especially pleased at how well our marigold mix dyes cellulose fibers. So it’s a great way to create that sunny yellow on cotton and linen. You can also use this extract to dye silk and protein fibers and create beautiful color combinations with the percentages below. MATERIALS CLICK HERE for our post on setting up your dye studio. PROCEDURE COLOR COMBINATIONS Here’s a palette with natural dye recipes suitable for that end of summer transition where the light turns golden and the air cools. The Orange Red reminds us of the underside of a liquid amber leaf; the Bright … Read more