4. BIOCHROMES¶

This week we worked on Biochromes, that is any pigment produced by a living organism for do natural textile dyes, inks and pigments. The idea is to learn how it’s possible to do a circular and a zero waste natural color Journey.

So, we have to:

produce at least one natural dye: modifying it’s colour and mordanting it in different ways to dye at least 2 different categories of fibers or at least one bacterial dye; Explored dyeing with bacteria of different fibers and/or bacteria
produce at leat one botanical Ink: exploring different materials, recipes and understand how to adjust them based on the ingredients or bacterial ink; explore bacteria solvents and understand how to adjust or use the inks.
document our recipes; the ingredients and process and if there have been changes, also the unexpected discoveries;
Name the materials, classify them by typology and display them in a systematic order of samples.

SOME INSPIRATIONS¶

Brazilian artists and designers who study/research natural dyes that I follow:

Sofia Seda | Mattricaria | Flavia Aranha

WALKING AROUND LOOKING FOR INGREDIENTS¶

This week was very special because it made me to look more to the nature around me, locally... So, for this assignment I wanted to explore the color of the Atlantic Florest and local dyeing elements, like plants of the South of Brazil.

The firts thing that I did was to observe the plants around me on the streets and in the markets. I used a very healpfull app that’s called INaturalist, Where you upload the Picture of the plant that you saw and that gave’s to you the scientific name. And after discovering the name, I did a brief survey on Google just to know if the plant it’s native from my region or no.

My firts choose was Iresine (Iresine herbstii), that ones where from the front of my work.

I also decide to use: Pinhão (that is the Araucaria angustifólia tree seed) – very commun and tradicional food in my city Curitiba, Mate herb (Ilex paraguariensis), Jabuticaba (Plinia cauliflora) that is a fruit, and the Flowers of Jacarandá (Jacaranda mimosifolia). The first ones I bought on Mercado Municipal de Curitiba, a very famous touristic point of my city, and the Jacaranda catched on the floor. For the Tanin I decided to use the Pata de Vaca (Bauhinia forficata, a tree from Atlantic Florest that contain tanin) sheet.

special thanks to my friend Bia, who went looking for flowers with me :)

in order: mate herb, jacarandá, iresine, pinhão and jabuticaba.

INKS AND PH MEASURES¶

For organize what I will test and how many textiles I gonna need, I decided to do Inks and Modifiers first.

So for this, I extract each of my 5 dye elements both in water and ethanol.

modifiers¶

I left the mixture resting while preparating modifiers:

ACID	ALKALINE	IRON	TO MEASURE THE PH
I just put a little vinegar	Dilute Sodium Carbonate in Water	do it 2 days before , 2,5L water + 1 cup of vinegar + half a cup of rusty nails. Boil for 1 hour, rest 24 hours	625 ml H2O for 125gr of purple cabbage. Cook for 40 minutes and sift, this water will be the PH indicator.

With the aid of a pipette and small pots, I measure the PH of my modifers by adding a little of them to the red cabbage mix to confere the amount of ingredients in the mix. Pink indicate Alkaline - Made with Sodium Carbonate, Green indicate Acid - Made with Vinegar, Purple is Neutral - no addition to the mix and dark blue is Iron Oxidation. How everything was correct, I was ready to go on with my pigments extractions.

With the help of a bowl, small pots and some plastic pipettes. I ran the modifier tests on both water-extracted and ethanol-extracted inks. I also made some swatches on paper to remember it. This enabled me to calculate how much fabric I was going to use for each dye I chose.

some swatches

TEXTILE DYES¶

For the dyeing of the fabrics, I got in touch with the atelier where I did an internship in my graduation course to get some waste in cutting and small pieces, as they used to work a lot with natural animal and vegetable fibers.

I got:

CELLULOSE

recycled mesh: 8% linen, 42% polyester, 50% cotton
100% cotton crepe
100% linen
100% linen cambraya
ribana: 100% viscose

CELLULOSE + ANIMALS

50% silk and 50% linen

ANIMALS

100% silk satin
100% wool
100% wool yarn
100% organic silk yarn (2 types)
100% organic silk (2 types)

I made small samples of each one and weighed. I got 23 grams of animal fiber and 30 grams of vegetable fiber (and mixed).

special thanks to Luan Valloto, who gave me the samples :)

scouring¶

This is the step that we made for clean the fibers and prepare them to receave the mordant. We made just for the vegetables because animal fibers are more fragiles, but as I'm using testile waste, I decided to make these step for animal fibers too, but usign a natural soap (recipe a little ahead).

VEGETAL FIBERS	ANIMAL FIBERS
2K of water to 6 grams of soda and boiled it for an hour	1.95L of water to 100ml of natural soap, which I boiled for 30 minutes

natural soap¶

NATURAL SOAP
1.5L water, 12.5ml ethanol, a tablespoon and a half of baking soda, 100 grams of coconut soap. Boil the soap and water for 15 minutes, then add the baking soda and ethanol and boil for another 5 minutes.

In this photo we can also see the result of the iron-based modifier at the middle, which I made in advance along with the recipe for the natural soap.

tannin¶

After washing the fibers and rinsing, the vegetable fibers need a premordant/tannin. For mine I used 6 grams of “Pata de Vaca” leaf (Bauhinia fosficata).

TANNIN PATA DE VACA
6 grams of the leafs to 900ml of water. Let it boil for 40 minutes.

mordant¶

For the mordant phase we use alum.

ANIMAL FIBERS	VEGETABLE FIBERS
3.5 alum (15% WOF), 2g (8% WOF) lemon and 1.5 liters of water. I let it boil for 30 minutes.	4.5 grams of alum (15% WOF) to 1.5L of water, boil for 30 minutes

dyes¶

All my dyes used 500 ml of Water, with the exception of dyeing with pinhão and jabuticaba, which used 750 ml. I dyed for 40 min each bath.

TIPS

never let the dye bath water boil, otherwise it will bubble up and stain the dyeing;
always choose to sieve the dye bath before adding the fabrics, this avoids stains;
always mark all processes in post its and in a notebook;
do not eat near the work area;
gently rinse the dye bath after finishing, without giving temperature shocks.

dyes	animal fibers	vegetable fibers	observations
mate herb (Ilex paraguariensis) + Sodium Carbonate	200% WOF of Mate Herb (4g) to 100% WOF of Sodium Carbonate (2g).	300% WOF of Mate Herb (9g) to 100% WOF of Sodium carbonate (3g).	I noticed that the color of the first recipe was very light, so I increased the amount a little for the next dyes.
mate herb (Ilex paraguariensis) + Iron	300% WOF of Mate Herb (6 grams) to 100% WOF of iron solution (2 grams).	300% WOF of Mate Herb (9 grams) for 10 grams of iron solution.	the result still showed a weak color, I believe that increasing the % of yerba mate the green can become quite intense.
Jacaranda (Jacaranda mimosifolia) + Sodium Carbonate	800% WOF (16 grams) of Jacarandá flower to 200% WOF of Sodium Carbonate (4g).	800% WOF (24g) Jacarandá flower to 200% WOF Sodium carbonate (6g).	Even if you have picked them fresh, the flowers oxidize very easily. But I decided to test this dye anyway, but the result is very light.
Iresine (Iresine herbstii) + Sodium Carbonate	1800% WOF of Iresine (32g)	1600% WOF of Iresine (48g)	I thought it would have a strong pink with this plant, but on the vegetables the ink stuck very little, and on the animals (which was quite surprising) the dyeing turned green
Iresine (Iresine herbstii)			I decided to do one more test, this time using a high concentration of Iresine (the rest I had, without measuring). It didn't work either, in the animal fibers the green was a little more saturated.
Pinhão (Araucaria angustifólia tree seed) + sodium carbonate	127g of pinhão ink diluted in 750 ml of water + 200 % WOF (10g) sodium carbonate		here I tested both types of fiber in the same bath
Pinhão (Araucaria angustifólia tree seed) + vinegar	127g of pinhão ink diluted in 750 ml of water + 200% WOF (23g) vinegar		here I tested both types of fiber in the same bath
jabuticaba (Plinia cauliflora)	122g of jabuticaba ink diluted in 750 ml of water		here I tested both types of fiber in the same bath
jabuticaba (Plinia cauliflora) + vinegar	122g of jabuticaba ink diluted in 750 ml of water + 200% WOF (23g) vinegar		here I tested both types of fiber in the same bath, I didn't notice any changes adding vinegar in this mixture
jabuticaba (Plinia cauliflora) + iron	122g of jabuticaba ink diluted in 750 ml of water + 30 ml iron		here I tested both types of fiber in the same bath and used a higher concentration of iron, very happy with this result

Attempts with Iresine, as can be seen in the photo, even though the dye came out pink in the bath, when rinsing the color came out practically whole.

The pinhão is very hard to peel, so I prepared it in the pressure cooker and used only the seed husk. The water from this first cooking I set aside to use as my final dye bath water. Then, I made a very concentrated ink with the shells and sieved it, this paint was the pigment for my final bath. This was the first dye I tested, sieving the bath before adding the fabrics and I really liked the result. In some dyeings, the bath with sodium carbonate foamed a lot, as was the case with the pinhão.

I did the same process of extracting the ink from the jabuticaba peel as I did with the pine nut, the difference is that it does not need to be cooked in the oven beforehand, since it is an easy fruit to peel.

results that surprised me:¶

mainly in animal fibers

pine nut with vinegar (the color was very intense, a terracotta); jabuticaba, a very shiny gold; *jabuticaba with iron, a very strong black.

unexpected results:¶

I imagined that because the vinegar worked very well with the pine nut, the result would also be surprising with the jabuticaba, but it didn't make much difference; * I expected a very strong pink from iresine, but the color is not fixed; I didn't imagine that rosewood would oxidize so quickly, the moment the flower touches the water it already oxidizes. * I imagine that matte herb can give surprising results like jabuticaba and pine nuts, I should have supersaturated the mixture. I was curious to test it with vinegar and with iron in higher %.

final results table¶

This is the final result of the dyes, organized in a table:

affectionately nicknamed brazilian biopantone table :)

The high resolution file can be found at this link.

PIGMENTS¶

To finish our zero waste journey, we reuse the water used in dyeing to make pigments (which can become different types of inks, color biomaterials or be reused to dye fabrics again!) and I confess that this was the part that made me most excited about this assignment.

For this, we need to precipitate the pigment from the dye bath with 2 parts of alum to 1 part of sodium carbonate, we dilute both parts in water and add first one, then the other slowly, always stirring (I used a fuê). This must be done very carefully in wide or long pots, as it foams a lot and if there are sudden movements it can be dangerous to explode. So it's also good to start with small amounts of alum and sodium carbonate (ie 10g of alum and 5g of sodium carbonate).

precipitating pigments - Fabricademy week 4 from Brunna Ramos on Vimeo.

a short video showing how to precipitate the pigments

After the mixture has finished precipitating (this takes a while), we filter. What remains in the filter is the pigment to be reused, just wait for it to dry (sometimes it does not dry properly in the filter and it is necessary to spread the pigment still wet on a flat surface to dry better, as in the example on the right of the photo). If you notice that the water that came out of the filter is still colored, we can reuse it and do the pigmentation again, if it comes out clean, there is nothing left to extract.