Tuesday, August 9, 2011

Indigo cold vat

Definitely into the blue realm today, after making a vat of indigo with a new method, thanks to the teachings of Barbara Shapiro, who was so generous with her teachings, (she does workshops) and is a wonderful artist and weaver, here are the results of my cold vat of indigo, no chemicals and can safely be poured on your garden once the ph is neutralized...how cool is that!! major cool...
and it is looking good...this is the silk boucle, which sucked up the blue, I have done four consecutive dips and this is the colour wet, it will fade somewhat in colour once it is dry but I am in love with the new method of dyeing with indigo, and see much more in my future. I will now attempt to overdye some of my weld, etc, yellow natural dyed wools and see how that works, and also some silk material that I would love to felt with if dyed in indigo. The skeins are dripping as I write, and will dry overnight before I rinse them and do a vinegar rinse to bring the ph back to form for the wool...I am sooooo excited by this, and dh did a video of me doing it and you can see the yarns going from green to blue as they oxidize...oh let the magic continue...we love natural dyeing and you cannot have too much alchemy in your world as far as I am concerned....and this is definitely alchemy!
back to the indigo and there will be more.

2 comments:

Leena said...

I am so envious. I have not managed to get any of the ecological vats to work in larger scale, for madder bran fermentation vat it is too cold, and the fructose vat fails when I try it in a bigger pot. You write that it is a cold vat, don't you need to heat it at all? I thought the fructose vat needed to be very hot. Can you tell the ingredients you used?

Lisa said...

I've taken Barabara's cold vat indigo class, and am wondering about your description of this method as using "no chemicals." Can you elaborate?