Biochromes
📅This week started on October 11th but I made the assignment after the final project. I looked through all the ingredients needed and materials, and went to buy/find them at home or at local places.
▪ What I made?
🗹 Produce natural dies: - modifying it’s colour and mordanting it in different ways to dye at least 2 different categories of fibers
🗹 Botanical Inks - explore different materials, recipes and understand how to adjust them based on the ingredients
🗹 Document the recipes, the ingredients and process
🗹 Name the materials, classify them by typology
▪ About
Why are biochromes and bioshades important? Is crystal clear that textile industry pollutes a lot, but the most polluting of all is the dyeing process of the fabrics. The industry uses tons of water for a single garment and this pollutes human beings, plants and the ecosystem in general. In addition, these dyeing processes often generate pollution even at the stage of use of the garment, because the user wash their clothes and the water releases fibers and chemicals that contaminate the whole world.
I liked this week because it's full of explorations and knowledge that may be helpful to reduce this big impacts and I liked this slide from the lecture that Cecilia gave us because I think it really explains what can we do with natural colors.
| Animal fibers | Vegetable fibers |
|---|---|
| Are natural fibers that consist largely of particular proteins, includinf hair, silk and feathers | plant- derived vegetable fibers with different plants source |
| wool / silk / mohair / alpaca | cotton / linen / hemp / jute |
It's easier by using ligther colors of fabric, if you use darker fabric the dye will be a little more tricky, but you need to know how to prepare each type of fabric. I followed the next steps:
| Animal fibers | Vegetable fibers |
|---|---|
| Wash the fibers gently with luke warm water and a litle bit of soap | Boil the fibers for an hour in water and sodium carbonate (approx. 2 spoons in 4 liter water) |
| Don't change tempeture dramatically, avoid much friction and heat because it can damage the wool and silk fiber | Repeat twice to remove the oil and waxes from the material |
🗒️ Notes from the class
- Using a mordant helps to ensure the most durable and long-lasting colors
- For animal fibers no scouring is needed, so such a simple wash with warm water and soap should be good enough
- Mordating process will add a substance called mordant to your fibers, serving as a sticky bridge between the fiber and the colorant. The most common types of mordants are: Alum, Iron and Copper. Some of them also act as a modifier, having an impact on the final color
Important Glossary 📖 - From Botanical Colors Natural Dye Glossary
▪ Mordanting: Mordanting prepares the fibers to bond with natural dyes and is typically a separate immersion bath for the fibers. It is important to submerge and agitate the fibers. Many natural dyes require the use of a mordant to achieve the most durable and long lasting colors.
▪ Weight of fiber (WOF): The dry weight of whatever one is dyeing.
▪ Scouring: is done with scouring agents such as sodium ash (sodium carbonate/natrium carbonate). These are used to prepare vegetable fibres for dyeing, basically to clean them by removing all the waxes, pectins to makes the textile material hydrophilic or water absorbent
▪ Tannins: Tannins are substances of vegetable origin that include leaves, bark, roots, fruits and are typically astringent or bitter to taste. When combined with iron, they create a blue-black color, and when used in mordanting cellulose fibers, they increase lightfastness and color yield
▪ Inspiration for this week
▪ Exploring with fabric and colors🔎
Fabrics/yarns - I wasn't really sure about the fabrics I used because I didn't buy them, I asked at a local sewing workshop and the seamstress gave me her scraps of the week! For only one week it's a lot of fabric scraps that in the end were useful for this assignment.
I know I used:
▪ Wool felt (animal-based 🦙)
▪ Cotton canvas (plant-based 🌿)
▪ Cotton yarns (plant-based 🌿)
and the others I can't be sure of the name but they're plant-based 🌿
Main Process
I'm not ussing tannins in any of the process
▪ The first step was planning the materials, ingredients and step that I need to follow, to make it in order and this was helpful to register everything
▪ Once I had all the materials, I classified them by its origin and then cut them in pieces of similar sizes in order to have similar WOF
▪ For this ligth cotton canvas I used the laser cutter to cut it with some flower shapes, I didn't make this with the other fabrics though
▪ Weight all the fabrics and yarns
▪ Scour. This helps to get a better dyed material
- To scour vegetal fibers: boil the water during 40 minutes with 2 spoons of soda carbonate in 4 liter water
I put 4 liters of water in the pot with 2 tablespoons of baking soda (I let it boil and add the baking soda, dissolve it and add the fabric). Let stand for 1 hour, remove the fabric, rinse it with warm water and squeeze.
- To scour animal fibers: Wash the fibers gently with luke warm water and a litle bit of soap
I put 2 liters of warm water in thepot and let the fabric stand for 30 mins approx. Then just drain and squeeze, do not rinse
▪ Mordant
- For vegetal fibers: use 10%-15% of the weight of the fabric, so as they weighted (in total) 410 grs, I used 40 grs of borax (I didn't get Alum so I was hoping that borax would work just as well)
- For animal fibers: use 10%-20% of the weight of the fabric, so as they weighted (in total) 45 grs, I used 5 grs of borax
| Scour time | Mordant time |
|---|---|
| 1 hour | 1 hour |
▪ Modifier
-I used rusty nails to make iron liquor. It saddens the color, makes it darker, more grayish. It can also be used as mordant
I placed 8 rusty nails in a container of hot water overnight (10 hours). I removed the nails and kept the water.
▪ Don't forget to keep the natural bath, they'll be useful to make inks and pigments
Natural dyes
| Date | Fibers | Dye stuff | Modyfier time |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5/5/22 | 66 g | avocado pits | 40 minutes |
Steps I followed:
- A half of purple cabbage, cut in small pieces
- I boiled it for 1 hour and then put the fabric in the pot
- Let rest for 2 hours
- Remove one part and lt the rest simmer overnight
- Remove all the fabrics
- Take an small amount of the bath and add the modifier
- Pour some fabrics in the new bath and let it rest for 3 hours
Outcomes
After the rinse it lost a lot of the color
But I boiled the water again and repeat the process and the final result turned out better
Modifiers
By adding vinegar to the bath you change the PH of the solution and that changes the color of the dye from purple to a intense pink color
it also has a visual color change when you turn on/off the ligths 🪄
| Date | Fibers | Dye stuff | Modyfier time |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5/5/22 | 66 g | avocado pits | any |
Steps I followed:
- I used purple onion peels. I asked for the peels at a local place, washed them and weighed them. They should be 1/4 of the WOF (so around 18 grams of purple onion peel).
- Boil the water with the peels for 1 hour and put the fabrics in
- Let it simmer for 1 hour
- Remove some of it and let the rest of it simmer for 1 hour or 2 hours
- You can add a modifier such as iron liquor
First impressions
Outcomes after rinse
| Date | Fibers | Dye stuff | Modyfier time |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5/5/22 | 66 g | avocado pits | any |
Steps I followed:
- I used 8 tea bags of 1.75 grams each bag
- Boil water and leave for 1 hour with the fabrics
First impressions
Outcomes after rinse
| Date | Fibers | Dye stuff | Modyfier time |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5/5/22 | 66 g | avocado pits | any |
Steps I followed:
- I had 4 avocado pits in my house that I've saved and the first step was to peel off the pit skin
- I boiled them in water for 1 hour
- Put the fabric in the pot and let the fabric rest for 1 hour
Outcomes after rinse
This one failed ❌, the color it is hardly noticeable on the fabrics, maybe it needed more pits?
Gallery
Botanical Inks
I decided to make the inks because I didn't have more mordant to make any pigments. I tried making inks with 2 of the dye baths: purple cabbage and black tea.
Important Glossary
| VEHICLE | ADDITIVE | BINDER |
|---|---|---|
| is the liquid in which the pigment is suspended - Water, Ethanol or Oil/Gel | is the substance that works like a glue between the dye stuff and the liquid, it gives more viscosity to the ink so is not spreading like water when applied to the paper - Arabic gum (it works only with water based inks) | is the substance that helps stabilising, intensifying, modifying, preserving or thickening the ink - Salt, vinager and metal |
Materials needed:
| VEHICLE | ADDITIVE | BINDER |
|---|---|---|
| water / alcohol | soda ash / salt | arabic gum |
- arabic gum is used to thicken the liquid. It helps the ink flow onto the paper in a controlled fashion and binds the ink with the paper. It will also help preserve the color
Process for regular inks: water-based
- Get an already used dye bath or make one from scratch
- Let the bath reduce a little bit on heat
- Add mordant (I didn't do that)
- Add one tsp of vinegar per cup of water and a dash of salt
- Add arabic gum (1 part to 10 parts ink or 30% of the liquid)
- Remove from heat, then try it and add different modifiers to it
Outcomes:
The inks I got from purple cabbage are kind of pink-purple tones but when applying them over the watercolor paper it turns into a blue tone, except the ones that used vinegar (30% - 15%), those were still pink after painting. I painted each piece of paper 4 times to get a more visible color on it
Useful alumnis works:
Useful tutorials:
▪ Tutorial Wet Lab Safety & Concepts
▪ Biochromes 20/21 - Cecilia Raspanti
▪ Biochromes 21/22 - Cecilia Raspanti
▪ Week's outcomes and learning 📌
This week was kind of crazy to organize everything because there were so many materials, ingredients and steps that you need to prepare before doing evertyhing. I really enjoy every second of this assignment, I didn't know almost anything about bichromes and this type of explorations so this was really enriching.
It was also crazy to document everything (trying not to mess all) but the excel template was very useful straight away, as well as the notes stuck on the table and everywhere else.
Getting local materials and ingredients is a nice way to make this first approache to this natural dies, I think I worried about getting this wrong so I didn't want to waste material. In total I used: 22 liters of water for all the dies I made and I had 3 dye baths that I can use in the future. Happy for that!
Recomendation ❗
Try to make everything in non-reactive pots (avoid aluminum). I didn't have other pots to use so I had to make the bath in aluminium pots
Other natural dyes I'll like to try 🔍
Black beans | Coffee | Blackberries | Spinach | sugar beet