Wednesday, February 1, 2012

Madder dyebath

Natural dye number 2: madder root.  So I did two dye bath tests.  Same madder two different baths.  The first trial I used three different yarns Plymouth's happy feet, dancing toes, and Cestari superfine merino sock yarn. They yielded a brick(happy feet) to rust red, both on the orange end of red.  The second dye bath, which I'm still waiting on to finish, I put 2 Cestari 3ply dk and reintroduced the dancing toes to see what a second soak would do. So far I'm getting oranges from the Cestari and the dancing toes has deepened in its redness.  Unless I use a cream of tartar and iron mordant I'm not going to have any type of blue introduced. Even then it would be a purple brown.
I think the only way to get a red on the blue end of the spectrum I'll have to break down and buy cochineal extract, which is on the higher end of the price scale for dyes, and its crushed bugs, which I didn't really want to use anyway. But if I want to offer a proper red in my yarn line I'll have to bite the bullet and get it. Anyway here is the picture of the first dyebath.



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