Coarse Walnut Hull

Description

Coarse Walnut Hull is the same black walnut as our ground walnut hull powder, but not as finely pulverized.  Use it in the same manner as regular walnut hulls to achieve rich dark brown and black tones.

Walnut Hull Powder from black walnut (Juglans nigra) is a common source of brown dye throughout North America. The fleshy hulls are full of tannin, juglone and other pigments and are the primary source of the dye. Walnut hulls were used to dye hair, make inks and clothing and are also used in herbal medicine.

For our samples, we used 1:1 walnut hull to wool gauze weight of fabric (meaning for every gram of fabric, we weighed out a gram of hulls), added the hulls to water, then heated the walnut and water for about 45 minutes. After that, we strained the walnuts out of the dye bath, kept the liquid and added wool gauze to the liquid, which was our dye bath.  We dyed for about 1 hour, then let the fabric steep in the dye bath overnight.  Please note that we usually recommend longer times for obtaining darker shades, but we saw how strong this dyestuff was and shortened our dye times.  The leftover walnut hulls have plenty of color in them and can be extracted with more water again.

Protein fibers such as wool achieve a very dark brown.  Plant fibers such as cotton will be a lighter shade and may benefit from longer dye times.

The wool was mordanted at 15% aluminum potassium sulfate, and the darker wool sample was mordanted with iron only, at 2%.  Check our instructions for iron mordant and for mordanting with aluminum potassium sulfate.

Sold in 250g packages.