Vibrant Valley Blue Indigo Paste

Description

We are thrilled to introduce a new, Pacific Northwest-based indigo paste from the incredible growers and dyers at Vibrant Valley Farm.  Kara Gilbert and her skilled team created Vibrant Valley Blue, a Persicaria tinctoria indigo extract. This product is based on years of growing, harvesting and experimenting with varieties, cultivation and extraction and they’ve scaled their production from a few hundred starts to a robust crop of over 10,000 plants.  The resulting indigo paste is easy to use and creates a beautiful clear blue.  Kara used this indigo to dye a number of garments and styles to hold fashion shows in the indigo fields during harvest.  As she states: “_This_ is farm to fashion.” Simply beautiful colors!

Botanical Colors is excited to carry Vibrant Valley Blue indigo paste, to support larger scale production of Persicaria tinctoria indigo in its formative years, and we love offering this product to our customers. Our other indigo dye products are extracts of Indigofera tinctoria, the historic blue from India, tropical SE Asia, and other parts of the world.

Vibrant Valley farms on unceded Wapato territory on Sauvie Island (formerly Wapato Island), with the Columbia and Willamette Rivers and the Multnomah Channel surrounding their beautiful part of Oregon. Kara says: “Wapato Island was a place for tribes to gather, trade and take advantage of the ever-so-bountiful, rich soil, fruit and fauna that flourished in this region. We carry deep compassion for this land and pay our respects and homage to those that inhabited this space, place and land before us and we do our best to respect and honor the land in our work daily. ”

Directions for use

Vibrant Valley Blue Indigo paste makes it very easy to create a 1-2-3 indigo vat using fructose as a reducing agent. For a Ferrous sulfate vat, see Notes below.

Create your vat with the following guidelines

• Start with a 3 gallon bucket as your vat.  This gives you a nice concentration of indigo and good results.
• Use the 1-2-3 indigo vat recipe with 1 jar of Vibrant Valley Blue, 100g of calcium hydroxide and 150g of fructose (or henna).
• Fill the 3-gallon bucket with about 2 gallons of very hot water, then use about a pint of very hot water to paste out and hydrate the calcium hydroxide and add to the vat.  Use another pint to dissolve the fructose. Add the fructose mixture to the vat.
• Add the jar of Vibrant Valley Blue to the bucket and use any remaining water to rinse the precious indigo into the 3-gallon bucket.
• If needed, add a little more water so that the indigo vat is about 4 inches from the top of the bucket. Mix well and let the mixture cool enough so you can dip.  You are ready to go!

Notes

• One jar of Vibrant Valley Blue is equivalent to 50 grams of indigo powder
• If you want to make a 1-2-3 Iron (Ferrous sulfate) vat, use one jar of Vibrant Valley Blue, 100g of iron (Ferrous sulfate) and 150 grams of calcium hydroxide.  Iron vat instructions are here. 
• Store Vibrant Valley Blue away from heat and direct sunlight.