4. BioChromes

Research

I discovered Natalie Stopka last year when I was getting into fabric marbling. I love the process of marbling because it's different every time which keeps the process fresh and exciting. Natalie is a dyer from Yonkers, NY. She's a great resource as I haven't found many people who have tried different methods of marbling with natural inks and colours. She shows examples of things like how acrylic colour vs. watercolour on silk breaks down after being washed in a standard washing machine.

• 1A = watercolour on silk
• 1B = watercolour after washing
• 2A= acrylic on silk
• 2B = acrylic after washing

More useful tips can be found on her blog here: Marbling Resources by Natalie Stopka

Of course Jason Logan is a well documented reference. I watched his documentary this week called "The Colour of Ink". I've known about Jason for a while so this was a perfect excuse to dive deeper into his work. While Jason collects samples from all over the world, it was neat to see what he foraged in Toronto, as it's also where I'm from. Most notably he talked about wild grapes that can sometimes be found along the West Toronto Rail Path. If you are about to get into a dye project I highly recommend watching this to help get you pumped up.

You can watch the film film on the National Film Board of Cananda for free here: The Colour of Ink

Process and workflow

This week Annie invited guest dyer Nicole to the lab to help us experiment. Nicole grows her own plants here in Quebec, and has been working with dyes for many years. On dye day we actually went to her home to dye the fabrics and to see where she grows her plants. Nicole was a wealth of information! Her website can be found here along with some of her beautiful handmade pieces for sale: Brinde Fibre

Note: This was a multi day process. We left many of the materials in the dye pots over night (not boiling) but it's good to keep in mind when you are planning your schedule. You need to mordant at least one day before dying in my oppinion to leave time for things to absorb the solution and also dry out.

Fabric: We also wanted to experiment with different materials. I liked the idea of jute because it's readily accessible and fairly earth safe. It can be decomposed in garden beds or used as a weed stopper so I though it might be neat to make a project from it that can just be composted at the end of it's life. Our materials were as follows:

1. Jute
2. Cotton
3. Linen

We found it really helpful to identify the fabrics later buy cutting the corners in specific ways. For example I cut a slant on one corner of the pre-acorn soaked jute to tell it apart from the regular jute since we alum bathed both materials together to save time.

A) We used 4 different methods of mordanting:

1. Alum + Cream of Tartar + Sodium Carbonate
2. Alum - 20% of dry material weight, otherwise know as weight of fibre (WoF)
3. cream of tartar - 5% (WoF)

4. sodium carbonate - 6% (WoF)

5. Lycopodium ( a type of club moss from creeping cedar)

6. 100% lycopodium to WoF, boiled for 2 hours and then strained
7. We then re-added the strained liquid to the pot and added cotton strips and boiled for another 1hr.

8. We left the fabric to cool in the vat for another 20hrs.

9. Titanium Oxcalate

10. Titanium Oxcalate @ 10% WoF
11. Epsom Salts @ 10% WoF

12. We boiled the jute and cotton for 1hr and then left in the vat for another 23hrs.

13. Acorn Caps + Alum

14. We prepared a bath of 800g of acorn caps, boiled for 2hr and left to soak overnight.
15. we then boiled our jute and cotton in the acorn cap solution for 1hr and left to dry
16. the next day, with dry fabric I re-weighed the jute and cotton together. It was 445.99g.
17. I used 20% alum to WoF which was 89.2g.

18. I then pre-soaked the jute and cotton and added it to a simmering alum bath 1hr and left it until the vat cooled.

19. Alum

20. 20% alum to WoF which was 89.2g.
21. simmering alum bath 1hr and left it until the vat cooled.

B)Making the Dyes:

To test these mordants we decided we'd try them with one main dye to clearly see the differences. We used coreopsis. We called this "Le Grand Tableau".

1. Coreopsis (for "le grand tableau")

   • (150g)
   • brought to a boil left in the vat for another 23hrs.

2. Mushrooms

   • (100g) brought to a boil and transferred to a jar to cool with fabrics

3. Weld

   • (100g)
   • brought to a boil and transferred to a jar to cool with fabrics

4. Sunflower seeds

   • (365g)
   • boiled for 1h45 mins

5. Dry old cornflowers

   • (20g)
   • simmered 1hr

6. Fresh cornflowers

   • (20g)
   • simmered 1hr

7. Amaranth

   • (40g)
   • simmered for 1hr

C) Dying The Fabrics: We started by cutting our fabric into swatches. We knew we'd be dying different mordants in the same dye pot so we had to organize how we would tell them apart later. We ended up organizing them by connecting them with plastic hooks that could be boiled. We had about 5 swatches per clasp.

The following number system is how many plastic hooks we put on each package to tell them apart:

• 1 = Acorn Caps and Alum
• 2 = Lycopodium
• 3 = Titanium Oxcalate
• 4 = Alum

We boiled each fabric in it's respective dye for 45mins - 1hr

Image above from left to right: dyes from, weld (unlabelled red liquid), old cornflower, fresh cornflower, amaranth, wild mushroom (orange dye), sunflower seed

Coreopsis Dye Mushrooms]	[ Sunflower Dye	[ Dry Cornflowers dye on the left, Fresh Cornflower dye on the right]
[

D)Modifiers:

For le grand tableau we used 3 modifiers to change to colours after the dyes had soaked in. We warmed up liquid in pots and placed them off to the side.

These were:

• Citric Acid in powder form, 3g
• Iron Oxide in powder form
• Baking Soda, 12g

Because we had left over baths we soaked a few other colours to test. I don't have exact timing of how long each was soaked but the follow images show the colour shifts based on modifier type.

RESULTS

[ Amaranth no modifier ]	[ Sunflower no modifier	[ sunflower iron]

Ink & Pigment Making: - For my ink I boiled 30g of red onion skins. The water line just covered the onions. - I simmered them for 1hr and left them to cool - when it was cool I strained it into two jars through a coffee filtre into a small bottle

After this I filtred the rest of my onion concentrate through a different coffee filtre into a glass jar. I ended up with only 600ml of liquid.

In our lecture we talked about using 10g of alum to 1 litre of dye bath, so in this case I used 5g. We also talked about having a 2:1 ration of alum to sodium carbonate so I used 2.5g of sodium carbonate.

[ Dry Onions]	[ Wet Onions	[ Alum]
[ Old The Final Ink]

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