Mordants, Color Changers and other Assists

There are so many mordant variations and we urge you to experiment and find the one that works best for you. If you’re not familiar with the term, mordanting is the most important process of preparing fibers to accept color. Mordanting prepares fibers to bond with natural dyes and is typically a separate immersion bath […]

This week: How to keep madder “fast” and is alum toxic?

This week: Interesting questions on pre and post-treatments for color and lightfastness

This week: Storing indigo from the colder weather, getting grays on protein fibers and indigo soap making

Using natural dyes is certainly a lot more friendly than using something like Rit but there are ways you can be a lot more efficient in how you use them. Here are some tips we’ve put together for you.

This week: What’s the shelf life of mordants and is cold indigo leaf dyeing stronger or weaker than hot?

This Week: Reusing symplocos for mordanting and considering just what a “chemical” is.

Each week, we are emailed with questions from our natural dye community asking simple and complex questions that we thought might be worth sharing. Here are a handful from this week answered by natural dyer in chief, Kathy Hattori, Founder of Botanical Colors: I’m an indigo dyer using an iron vat. I keep getting the […]

Each week, we are emailed with questions from our natural dye community asking simple and complex questions that we thought might be worth sharing. Here are a handful from this week answered by natural dyer in chief, Kathy Hattori, Founder of Botanical Colors: When do I know when I should stop rinsing my yarn after […]

Each week, we are emailed with questions from our natural dye community asking simple and complex questions that we thought might be worth sharing. Here are a handful from this week answered by natural dyer in chief, Kathy Hattori, Founder of Botanical Colors: Do you have any tips on getting a crimson red on cotton […]