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4. BioChromes

Research

There is an artist that uses aubergines peels for their color and I find it mesmerizing to witness the color palette she achieves.

These images are official photos from Precious Peels.



There is a fashion brand I have been following for a long time as they follow up close textile innovation as well as textiles finishes innovation. Often, natural colors are earth colours and I like that they found the iconic grey for sportswear into the colour range of natural colours.



These images are official photos from Pangaia.

Here are wonderful examples of previous alumnis recipes.

Diving into the topic

These are my own photos

We took a walk outside and here the plants we found :

1. prunus, a very common tree with beautiful dark red/purple leaves

2. aulne, the fruit of a common tree

3. tinctorial plants containers with famous Achillea Millefolium

4. at a local tinctorial garden we ran into a volunteer and artist specialised in tinctorial plants for textile tapestries - she warned us that most colours of the area are yellow or the vibrant ones have disappeared.

5. we dried everything we found to reduce it into powder for more vibrant colours

This week we all worked together making natural dyes, pigments and inks. It was nice since we all had some knowledge to share and learned a lot from each other. We started of by deciding what dye baths we wanted to do and calculating how much material we should cut for each bath and so on.



Tools

  • big pots
  • measuring cups
  • wooden spoons, chopsticks, forks
  • bowls
  • petri dish
  • coffee filter paper
  • tape
  • marker
  • drying rack
  • dehydrating machine
  • chemicals to alter natural products (see below in photos)

Process and workflow

These are my own photos

We followed the same process for testing every plant we collected. The example above shows what we first did with onion peels. We tried textiles in each petri dish.

We tested the following chemicals each time:

Citric acid
Washing soda
Borax
Cream of tartar
Epsom salt
Iron sulfate
Alum
Tannin
  1. Boiled peels for 1h.
  2. Pour in petri dish
  3. Add 8 modifyiers
  4. Soak a mordanted piece of fabric
  5. Dry :)

Mordanting

I mordanted all night long cotton yarn and fabric. Claire and Annabel chose silk and wool and had different recipes adapted to their material.

  1. I washed by hand with Marseille Soap and let it dry
  2. Soaked for a night with 25% of the weight of the dried fabric with alum

Dyeing

We followed the process for all the following natural plants we picked up, and here are the results :

describe what you see in this image describe what you see in this image Prepare this recipe [^1] by collecting the ingredients necessary, to be found in the list below:

ingredients
  • xxx gr madder root
  • xxx gr alum
  • xxx gr fabric
  • xxx ml xxx
  • xxx gr xxx

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum."

Blue sky

recipe mallow dye on protein and cellulose fibers
  • measure
  • add
  • simmer
  • mix
  • remove
  • strain
  • repeat

Favourite colors

1. Tanasie + Alum on cotton yarn
2. Tanasie + Alum on uncarded wool
3.Tanasie + Alum on cotton fabric
4. Campeche + acid citric on wool fabric 
5. Campeche + acid citric on uncarded wool
6. Campeche + acid citric on cotton fabric
7. Mangoustier + acid citric on cotton fabric
8. Prunus + acid citric on cotton yarn 
9. Campeche + Alum on cotton fabric
10.Campeche + Alum on wool
11. Prunus + Alum on cotton fabric
12. Prunus + Iron sulfate on cotton fabric
13. Prunus + Iron sulfate on uncarded wool
14. Salvia + Epsom salt on cotton fabric
15. Salvia + Epsom salt on uncarded wool
16. Bamboo + borax on cotton
17.Bamboo + borax on uncarded wool
18. Mangoustier + acid citric on uncarded wool

Recycling the dye into pigments

coming soon

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Recipes

300 ml of dyed marigold
100 g of alum, diluted in a little warm water
20 g of baking soda

Unexpected discoveries

Creating screenprinting ink !! We used agar agar because we did not have the right guar gum powder, we still tried and we ended up with a thick paste.