Dyeing with fresh isatis tinctoria
Materials:
- Fresh woad leaves
- Alpaca wool (37 gram, carded)
Wol voorbeitsen met aluin: Zet de wol een paar uurtjes van te voren in het water. Ikzelf werk graag met regenwater uit de regentonnen. De wol blijft dan zachter.
- Soak the wool for a few hours
- Dissolve 15% alum (so for 37 gram I used 5,55 gram) in boiling water (alum only dissolves above 92 degrees celsius). Use 3 liter water per 100 gram wool > so I used approx. 1,11 liter of water.
- Remove pan and wait till the water with alum is about 40 degrees. Then add to the presoaked alpaca. If you do it when the water is too hot (big temperature difference) the wool will shrink.
- alum isn’t needed but gonna use it anyway
- woad 4:1 wool in weight is supposed to be the correct ratio according to this website, but we have 16.6 gram of woad & 37 gram of wool so we’re just gonna see how it’s gonna turn out with this ratio of about 0.5:1 woad : alpaca wool.
- I cut the woad leaves and set 1L of water (not sure) on a stove until it was 90 degrees Celsius. Then I turned off the stove, put in the leaves and left them in for about 10 min following the before mentioned tutorial. After straining the dye I changed approach because I didn’t have soda ash or the other powder and Manon said the easiest recipe was to set the wool with alum & the pan with the woad on the stove for an hour at 90 degrees (separately); and after an hour combine the mixtures (without the leaves) and leave on 90 degrees for another hour.
- It didn’t work.