Natural Dye Workshop 10

Immersion Dyeing:

Usually we dye 8 pounds of yarn in a large pot; but if you want to just dye a skein or two of yarn, you can scale your dyeing to stove top proportions quite easily using some high school algebra and still follow these basic instructions.

With the exception of indigo, this immersion dyeing procedure describes dyeing with all the natural dyes I use: cochineal, madder, logwood, cutch, fustic, etc. There are some exceptions to the procedure specific to individual dye extracts and those I detail by color and by extract under the Natural Colors tag of the blog.  Indigo requires a different procedure and that is described in Natural Dye Workshops 5, 6 & 7.

We dye outside no matter the weather.  There is something beautifully real about seeing a snowflake dissolve in a steaming pot of wine red cochineal on a gray February afternoon.

• Into a 100 qt. stainless steel pot we add about 80 qt. of water (10 quarts per pound of yarn) and begin heating it over a propane burner.  These utensils and their sources are noted in Natural Dye Workshop 4.
  
• In a smaller SS pot we stir & dissolve either liquid or powdered dye extracts in water being heated over another propane burner.
• We add the dissolved extracts to the larger pot, when the water has become warm to the touch, and stir the dyebath.
• In the bath we immerse 8 pounds of wet, mordanted yarn and gently move it around in the pot wetting it well with the dye liquor.
• It will take about 30 minutes for the bath to reach the desired dyeing temperature of 200°F; during that time we gently stir the pot several times moving the solution up and down with a ladle rather than moving the yarn around to avoid tangling it as best we can.

• At 200°F (evidenced by small bubbles coming up from the boiling pot bottom) we turn the heat down and keep the pot at that temperature for 30 minutes or so, occaisionally ladling the bath.
• During the heating process we may pull the yarn from the bath to judge the color: is the yarn ready or does it need more time in the bath?
• When it's ready we pull it and allow it to drip for 10 minutes before rinsing it in a washing machine. We agitate the yarn by hand but spin the rinse water from it with the machine.  Three rinses is usually sufficient.
• We dry the yarn by hanging it on a line inside, out of the sun, and put fans on it to speed the drying. 
  

When it's dry, I photograph the yarn for the site and skein some of it for the stand.