Root of the Madder

Well a wonderful place out of time called Pensic allowed me to pick up all of the mordents that I could need for my early experiments.   Also, I have been enchanted while searching the web, by all of the examples of madder dyeing I had seen, so in the same booth I picked up a 4 oz bag.

 Now, not having a good idea of the concentrations need for many of these experiments I have been using a 1 part fiber (by weight) to 8 parts fresh plant materials.   With this being a dry and fairly concentrated dye stuff I went with 1:1 ratio with the dried, powdered roots.

So the steps...

mordent wool 115 g and 15g cotton with 1 tbls of alum 1 hr

bring powdered madder (4 oz) in a silk bag up to just under 80'c but no higher, over 1.5hr in water with 1 tbs washing soda

add wool keep at below 80'c 1 hr, open bag 1hr let cool over night

squeeze out excess and dry, shake out root dust when dry, wash and then dry again

madder, last two on far right

Now this was not as dark as I would have liked, but I have read in a few places that the longer you mordent your fibers the better the dye is taken up, especially with madder.  So just for the heck of it I froze my very dark red dyebath and I will follow the advise of a few recipes and mordent my wool for a few weeks (yikes).  Though I may stage it up so that in one dyebath I can show yarns that have been in the mordent bucket for 1, 2 and 3 weeks.  This could be a real/interesting experiment, now to find a spare bucket.