Dyeing With Cochineal & Logwood

“January 27. All Dye pans in use, pretty well off for work this week…
Feb 3. Wild soft morning… Saw John Fairbank [who] arrived from America about a fortnight ago- Says he thinks there won’t be a War between this country and America; the poor people are very much out of work at New York; he says he has seen cloth of American manufacture, but [they] cannot manufacture it as cheap as we can send them it.
Fuel is dear there is one horse cart load of Wood cannot be bo’t  (bought) for less than 17s. (shillings) He has seen the Wool of that country which is pretty good and would was it here sell from betwixt 20-/ to 30-/ Pr stone but worth a good deal more there. At New York he saw some Logwood to sell they wanted £16 10s Pr Ton; rather thinks they may buy it for less in Liverpool the same quality, as there may be bo’t good Jama’ka Log’d in Leeds at £12 pr Ton…”

[From ‘The Diary of Joseph Rogerson’, 1808, Bramley, Leeds].

Here’s some wool and silk I dyed last week. The dyes shown range from cochineal (far left), which I used in 3 separate dye baths, til the colour was exhausted, to logwood (Quink Ink Purply-blue and mauve on the right) and Alderbuckthorn Bark.  I thought I’d share some dyeing tips with yous, and also give a couple of recipes. I tend to stick with the historical dyes – things that are tried and tested.

A Note on Mordanting…

Most dyes need a mordant to help them ‘bite’ onto the fibre being dyed. For these recipes, I have used alum, or alum and cream of tartar.  We used to be able to buy alum in ‘Boots’ on any high street but these days, I send off for it.  Older recipes from the 1980s or before, suggested you use upto 4oz alum per lb of wool in old money. (ie: 25% alum to weight of wool). But in recent years this has been adjusted downwards, with no ill effects. I tend to have a rule of thumb of around 10% which makes it easier, and more accurate, for me now to work in metric, not imperial. So if dyeing, say 100g wool I would use around 10g alum.

I’m giving you recipes for cochineal and for logwood dyeing today, but for logwood you could substitute any of the dried dyestuff, or bark dyes. I buy the more exotic/historical dyestuffs from George Weil, and P & M Woolcraft. 

Equipment

I’ve found all my equipment in charity shops (thrift stores), car boot sales – or Poundland! You don’t have to have everything at first – just the bare minimum of a dyepot and a stick/old wooden spoon to stir it with, is enough to get started. I have a number of dyepots – the most expensive, a large, plain aluminium jam pan, cost me £4 in a charity shop about ten years ago. It helps to have two dye pots if you know you’re getting into this, as then you can have a production line going, which saves on fuel. Tablespoon – I got one in a charity shop that looks totally different to the ones we use to eat from, so no confusion!

Container made from plastic with lid (Celebration, Roses, Quality Street ‘tins’ are ideal), to store mordants and dyestuffs. Keep out of reach of children and the stupid and label POISON, but don’t draw a skull & crossbones on it as that actually attracts children and the stupid…

You’ll Need:

Dyepot – aluminium, that can hold at least 10 litres of water, plus your fibre.

Old wooden spoon, or a stick, to stir with.

Small Pyrex bowl or jug to steep dried dyestuffs.

Stainless steel tablespoon

Clean jam jar (to dilute mordants in)

Colander

About half a metre of muslin to line colander when straining dyestuffs, or a length of nylon Poundland fly netting works great for this.

For most dyes, the rule of thumb is a ratio of around 1:1 in weight of fibre and dyestuff . Ie: for 100g of wool, use 100g dyestuff. Cochineal is different. You can get away with 25g of cochineal to 100g fibre. So it is not as expensive as it appears. With logwood you also get more bang for your buck. I managed to dye around 300g fibre with 30g of logwood. Dried dyestuffs are more concentrated than random things from the garden.

Fibres

I used some organic Lleyn wool, some Boreray, and also as usual, dropped in some undyed silk hankies. I usually have some silk hankies on hand, for dye experiments. These would be easy enough to dye using a microwave, too, as they are so much less bulky than wool. Received wisdom has it that we shouldn’t mix silk and wool in the same dye-pot, as they have different take-up times, but if you are not worried about this – it is fun to experiment. I often lift the silk out earlier than the wool, as it takes dye so well.

Take Your Time

To get my moneysworth, I maximise the colour in every way possible: giving the dyestuff a long soak (overnight is good, several days even better); using the dyebath til exhausted so get successively paler batches of colour; using the very exhausted dyebath maybe to overdye an old, unimpressive dyes experiment…  It is also worth researching your dyestuff. Cochineal and madder, for example, require soft water. I live in the area with the hardest water in the UK. I could be organised and collect rainwater to ensure a ready supply of soft water. But I’ve never got round to fixing a downpipe to the water butt, so… I’d be wasting my money on these dyestuffs if I didn’t get something to assist me with the dyeing. Calgon,  (sodium hexametaphosphate) can be got from craft suppliers fairly cheaply and it is a more suitable strength for the dye-pot than the water softeners in the supermarket. 3g of this will soften the water to dye around 125g of fibre. Otherwise, the colour will want to attach itself to the minerals in my hard water, rather than the fibre.

Dyeing takes time and if you  steep the dyestuff in water overnight, and let the fibre ‘rest’ at least overnight, or longer, between mordanting, dyeing, and the final washing, you will get good results. In other words: you can do it all in one go, but if you break it into stages and let it rest between them, that will give you optimum results.

Be Safe!

If like many home dyers, your kitchen is your dye studio, then the usual common sense rules and hygiene protocols apply. Don’t cook food at the same time as dyeing or mordanting, use separate vessels etc, and clean up your act afterwards.  Handle mordants wearing disposable gloves or gloves set aside for dyeing pursuits.  Wear a mask when measuring out dry mordants in powder forms. They’re safer to handle once diluted.  Be cautious and careful. Some mordants are toxic – personally, I have only ever used alum to mordant, or substantive (needing no mordant) dyes and you can see from the pics here, get excellent colour. My 19thC relative, Dan Dawson, did his early experiments with chemical dyeing in his family’s kitchen in Longwood, near Huddersfield, and managed to turn the family’s bread red for weeks. Slightly worrying as the early magenta dyes had arsenic in…

Grow Your Own!

And grow some dyestuffs, too. Woad is easy to grow, as are weld and madder and those three alone give you the primary colours. This year we are hoping to start a dye garden behind one of the viking long-houses at the Yorkshire Museum of Farming. Come along this summer and see how far we got!  I have bought seeds from Wild Colours.

Variables

There are many variables in dyeing – mordant, type of and whether before, during or after colour.  Assists used, eg: cream of tartar. Dye bath temperature and duration. pH. Concentration of dyestuff. Hardness/softness of water.

Heat + agitation = felting, so if dyeing wool, try to make sure all the fibre is submerged then leave well alone. The less you stir the better. Make sure your mordants/assists/dyestuffs are well dissolved before adding your fibre, and this will save you poking and prodding so much. When dyeing, I practice the art of benign neglect.

Leave to cool in mordanting solution. Mordanting solution can now be disposed of safely, or kept in a cool place to re-seed a later mordanting bath. If re-seeding, only add 50% the mordant and assistant, you would have needed for the weight of fibre you’re dyeing.

Dyeing

In your dyepan, dissolve in hot water your calgon (if using it), then add the steeped dyestuff and its liquid and fill dyepan to over half way.  Bring to just under boiling point, slowly. Simmer for 40 minutes. Then take off heat and cool. Strain liquid (I use a colander specifically for this purpose, lined with muslin). Retain dyestuff for future use.

Add your mordanted, wetted-out fibres and slowly raise again to simmer, then simmer at least an hour or til colour looks good to you. You can use dye baths til dye is exhausted.

Rinse thoroughly til water runs clear and you have no more loose dye.

Continue to use dyebath til colour is exhausted, or cool and decant into plastic bottles, freeze to use later or keep in cool place and use within next week or so. When I think I have finished dyeing, I put the cochineal (or other dyestuff) in a Pyrex bowl in the microwave, with a little fibre. And dye some more. It is surprising how much colour you can wring out of that 25g of cochineal.

Using the same quantities, you can be more eco-friendly by dyeing & mordanting simultaneously. This works with cochineal, but doesn’t work so well with all dyestuffs, so maybe it is wise to experiment with a small tester batch before you dye a lot, if you want to simultaneously dye and mordant.  Solar dyeing (a clean jar on a sunny windowsill, with a pinch of mordant and a handful of fibre) is a good way to test if simultaneous mordanting may work for your chosen dye-stuff.

Dyeing With Logwood

30g Logwood

300 g wool fibre, scoured and rinsed (I used Lleyn organic wool and, as usual with my dye pots, dropped in some silk hankies).

I experimented with both hard and soft water dyepots. Hard water gives inky blue violets; and exhaust dyebaths, mauve. But soften the water at your peril! You will get a grim, dingy brown. I ‘rescued’ mine slightly, by rinsing in hard water and white vinegar which turned it a kinda-browny-mauve. But I won’t be using soft water any time soon. If your water is soft, then add a bit of white distilled vinegar as an assist. Either way, add a little vinegar to your rinsing water, if possible. Logwood can bleed like a stuck pig, so you may have to rinse it very thoroughly to get rid of loose dye. I have always had nice results with wool and spectacular results with silk, when it comes to logwood.

How To…

Overnight….

Soak logwood  in boiling water. Tipped from the kettle, recently boiled, is good.

Thoroughly scour, rinse then soak fibre  in clean water.

Next Day…

Mordant as above. For best results, use hard water.

Bring logwood up to just below boiling point, in at least 10 litres water.

Strain out the solids. Put aside to re-use later.

Put  pre-mordanted, wetted-out fibres in dyepot, and again raise to boiling point.

Simmer just under boiling point, for at least an hour, or longer. Remove when desired depth of colour is achieved.

Leave fibres in overnight to cure.

Rinse in salted water with a dash of white vinegar (handful of seasalt should do it).

Exhausting The Dye…

Exhaust  logwood. Dry out and store in paper bag, or re-use immediately whilst still damp.

Bring dyestuff to just under boiling point. Simmer for at least 45 minutes.

Strain out the solids.

Put pre-mordanted, wetted-out fibres in dyepot, and again raise to almost-boiling. Simmer just under boiling point, until desired depth of colour is achieved.

Leave fibres in overnight to cure.

Rinse in salted water (handful of seasalt should do it). Dry carefully.

With the exhaust dyepot, bear in mind final results will be affected if you softened the water, earlier.

Resources

My ‘bible’ and go-to resource, is the thirty year old book, ‘A Dyer’s Manual’ by Jill Goodwin. Other dye books come and go. This book is the only one you’ll ever really need.  For more info about cochineal, this website is excellent:

http://www.cochinealdye.com/html/dyeing.html