A Nerd’s Guide to Mordants

Description

A Nerd’s Guide to Mordants

A two-part online workshop Saturday September 13 and Saturday September 20 from 10 AM to 1 PM Pacific.

Taught by Kathy Hattori

Workshop links, materials and equipment list and pre-work instructions will be sent to participants upon registration.

This is the nerd’s guide to mordants – what they are, why they are important and how they are used in natural dyeing. Everyone wants to create long-lasting and beautiful plant color and the best way to do that is to mordant properly.  The class will experiment with the most popular plant-based tannins and alum accumulators, mineral salt mordants and other binders to see the effects on animal and plant fibers. Each mordant variable will be dyed so that we can see results and we will build a reference folio for students to take with them as a record of their experiments. We will emphasize how to use mordants safely to create incredible color variables.

Through our experiments, we will gain insight into the relationship between the mordant, the dye and other ways we can coax color onto cloth.  At the conclusion of the workshop, students will have a clear understanding of which mordant to use, and when to follow the rules and when to bend them a bit.

The workshop will be offered as two 3-hour sessions, with pre-work and ample time for questions and answers. You will be able to purchase the dye materials and fabrics in a kit that we prepare for you, or furnish the materials from your own stash.

Kit available for purchase includes

• 4 fabric types: cotton, linen, silk and wool fabric
• all mordant variables covered in the workshop
• PDF file to print mordant swatch sheet
• All dyes used in the workshop
• All modifiers used in the workshop

Skills and Techniques:

• Fabric evaluation and selection
• Fabric preparation – choosing scouring and mordanting
• Mordanting a variety of fibers including plant and protein-based
• Comparing different mordants and fibers
• Understanding mordant results and how to modify them