Tuesday, October 15, 2013

Madder Recipe

I will be at the Woodstock Fleece Festival (Woodstock, ON) Oct. 19, 2013. Booth is B18 in the center aisle. My husband of Four Poster Woodworks will be selling spinning tools & a few weaving products.
I will have some of my handcrafted soap ( MIM Soap ) and a few bags of madder for sale with this included recipe, but here it is for anyone that would like it.


Madder Root Prep for Dyeing Wool

Yield: 35-100% WOF*. eg. 100 grams of fibre will require from 35-100 grams madder depending on the DOS** you would like.

There are many methods used to dye with madder. Here is one example how to dye a protein fibre:

Prepare the fibre/skein:
Scour yarn or fibre.
Mordant clean fibre/yarn with alum (potassium aluminum sulfate) as your instructions recommend. Rinse.
Fibre or yarn for dyeing must be soaked at least 1 hour.

You probably would want to place the fibre in a mesh bag or strain the dye first to remove the root matter.

Prepare the dyepot by adding to 4 l. water to a large pot (stainless steel or enamel) and soaking the roots overnight.
For best colour results the water should be hard. If you don’t have hard water you can add a little calcium carbonate (or one Tum’s tablet) to the water along with the roots.
Alternately, you can grind the roots in a non-food blender with some of the water first, doing a little at a time before adding to the dyepot. Soak overnight.

When roots & water have been combined & have soaked overnight, slowly raise temperature to 140F for 1 hr.
Add fibre and continue cooking at 140 for 1-2 hrs.
Temperature is important because higher temperatures will bring out brownish reds – so do not go above 160F.
At the end of this time the fibre can be removed and cooled. Let sit overnight & rinse the next day.

*WOF= weight of fibre
**DOS=depth of shade

100 grams=3.5 oz.
113 grams=4 oz.

Further reading:
1. http://www.maiwa.com/pdf/natural_dyeing.pdf
2. http://www.wildcolours.co.uk/html/madder_dye.html
3. A Dyer’s Garden book by Rita Buchanan




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