Natural cold dyes 天然冷製染料

I got the good price of cotton gauze and keen to try natural dyes on it without hesitation. The blue-grey was dyed from indigo while the pink-purple from cochinael.

I was asked to recommend reference books for my natural prints.  There're many experts doing great but my answer to my works is my "brain".  It's joking but truely I appreciate very much other experts but I can't follow well because of local condition, such as water, soil, air, plants, weather...... all depends, that's very regionalism.  So I can only recall my own experiments and explore any possibilities.

This blue-grey from kind of indigo, the plant is Strobilantes ( 馬藍) from my yard.  I only used the simply way to get the pigments.  Know this may not be the proper way but it works for me.

I chopped the leaves,  soaked in a jar with warm water for two days, mixed with little lime and pour into a container for a few times to get oxygen for darker blue-grey.   Then soaked the cotton gauze for a few minutes. 

 

The shades of colors due to the amount of soaking time . The bolder the first time.

I wanted purple from cochinael

So I dipped into the dyes

This is how I made the cold cochinael.  I grated a little cochinael and mixed with alum and water, as well a little vinegar.  Let it sit for a couple of hours.

So I dyed a few yards of cotton gauze with indigo and cochinael in cold way.

 

The fabric is sitting for 3 weeks for color fixing then I'll do nuno felt fashion with it on my return from the workshop organised by Fibrefusing in the Netherlands led by the Russian designer Tatiana Sheverda.