I have been interested in learning about natural dyeing for many years, but I always was a bit intimidated by what seemed like a technical and laborious project. And to be perfectly honest, it is, or at least can be... but I ended up working out my own dumbed down version of the dyeing process, which still resulted in some fabulous colors without very much knowledge or effort!

To start out, I knew I wanted some shade of pink or red for my Florentine dress project, so I checked out the types of natural dyes that would have been available in Italy at the begining of the 16th cenury. I discovered by reading The Silk Industry of Renaissance Venice by Luca Mola that the red palate was the most important range of hues in the Renaissance fabric trade, with at least six different red dyes available at the time, and three treatsies written between the mid-15th and mid-16th centuries which focused their attention on working with these materials. The silk that I was dyeing was not a very high quality, so I originally chose madder, which now as it was then, is fairly inexpensive, easily obtained, and yields bright, stable colors that range from orange to deep red.

I then ordered 8 oz. of madder and 1 lb. of alum from Dharma Trading Co. While waiting for that to arrive, I spent a week or two reading up on natural dyeing techniques in various books such as The Art and Craft of Natural Dyeing by J. N. Liles, the NaturalDyes group at Yahoo, and any other place that I could find any info on the subject. The one thing that I quickly realized was that there are as many different ways to dye as there are dyers, and everybody seemed to have good results as long as you are pretty open-minded about the final color. One of the most reassuring sites that I found dealt with cold water madder dyeing, which really gave me the courage to to quit worrying about complicated recipies or precise temperatures and just jump right in!

scouring the silk

The first step with any form of dyeing is to scour the fabric to get rid of any oils or chemical residues that could interfear with the absorption of the dyes. For this step, I threw the silk in a pot of water with a scoup (4 oz.) of Ivory Snow detergant and let it simmer on low heat for about an hour. I then just rinsed it thoroughly until it no longer felt slimy.

Next, I used the alum to pre-mordant the fabric. Most natural dyes have an ability to stain fabrics on their own, but to truly create a permanent bond betweeen the color and the fibers you have to add some sort of mordant. These have been made of a wide veriety of materials throughout history, including chrome, copper, tin, or even dung and fermented urine... but since alum seems to be the most common and easiest (and least nasty!) choice, I just went with that. To apply the mordent, I dissolved 8 oz. of alum in warm water and let the silk soak in the cooled bath overnight. The alum apparently works after as short of a time as one hour, but longer periods and higher concentrations produce brighter or darker colors. Although some accounts suggest leaving the fabric in the mordant bath for up to a month, one day was as long as I could stand to wait!

the madder dyebath

To prepare the madder, I decided to crush the roots a bit to help it release the color faster. Even though they were pretty tough and woody and it did require a little bit of work, I was able to break the roots up into fairly small pieces with a mortar and pestle. I then put 4 oz. of the broken-up madder into a bag made from hankerchief weight linen, although I later realized that works better to use synthetic materials (I've read that pantyhose work really well!) so that the bag doesn't soak up too much of the precious dye. The bag of madder was then left to soak in a small bowl of water for a day to soften it up and get the dyes flowing. The next day, I added the bag of madder and water to a large enamel pot with more warm water. As a side note: if you use an enamel pot, make sure it doesn't have any chips in the surface becuse the exposed metal can change the color of the dyebath. I wanted to make some test swatches before doing the real thing, so I put a long strip of the silk into the bath and then proceeded to cut off little pieces at various intervals over three hours. After that, since everything seemed to be working pretty well, I chunked the silk in the pot and just let it cook while stirring it from time to time and anxoiusly checking the color. Unfortunately, I ran into a bit of a problem at this point. While the little swatches were working just fine and dyeing to a deep, glorious red after only a few hours, my 13 1/2 yards of silk maxed out at a dissappointing medium orange no matter how long I left it in the dyebath. I even added another 4 oz. of madder to increase the concentration of dyes a bit more, but it still refused to go red.

rinsing the cochineal

Round 2: Although my tangerine colored silk would have been perfectly period and would have looked lovely on somebody else, it was quite ghastly with my pale complexion and red hair. So I ordered some more madder with the thought of trying for red again, and just on a whim, I also got a 2 oz. package of cochineal as well, which was supposed to make bluer shades of pink and red. Cochineal is a type of insect dye that was found in the New World, but has the same coloring agent as kermes, another insect dye used to make the most coveted crimson fabrics during the Renaissance. Becuase the chemical properties are the same, kermes and cochineal produce almost identical colors, so technically, cochineal would not have been used in Florence before the 1540's, but the results are pretty much the same either way. Even today, cochineal is quite expensive ($12.95 for 2 oz.), and since I didn't want to waste too much money on an experimental project, I only ordered the smallest amount possible and didn't have much hope that 2 piddly oz. would do much good since 8 oz. of madder couldn't do the trick the first time around. But in this case, I was very wrong!

After re-mordanting the silk for another night, I then put the whole uncrushed insects in a bag and soaked them in a small pot of simmering water, which produced an amazingly strong dyebath. Once the insects softened up again, they would release a bright blood-red liquid when squeezed (one of the grosser things I've seen lately!), but when added to my local water, the bath turned deep purple. When I put the silk into the dyebath, it almost instantly turned a rich, plummy-red color, and I removed it after only about 15-20 minutes because I was afraid that it would end up being too purple. Finally, I rinsed the fabric out really well and hung it on a clothesline to dry. And to my infinite shock and delight, I soon realized that the dry fabric was almost exactly the color of pink that I had wanted in the first place! Talk about beginner's luck! ;-)

the final color hung out to dry

Some additional random thoughts:

• It is very east to get uneven color. Athough you can't really see it in any of the pictures (those vertical stripes in the clothesline pic are from the light shining through thinner areas in the weave), my fabric has a fair amount of subtle gradations in color throughtout the surface. This could probably be avoided in the future by working on these three areas:
  1. Make sure the pot is big enough. Mine wasn't, so the silk tended to get twisted up in areas which made the color darker in some places than others. Stir often. Because I wasn't using high cooking temperatures (140° or less), the color would infuse more at the bottom of the pan than at the top, so I had to agitate it often to keep from getting "hot spots" where the fabric sat too long on one place right over the burner at the bottom.
  2. Keep the actual dye materials in a separate pot. At first, I was putting the bag of dyestuff in with the fabric, but I later noticed that I was getting darker patches where the silk was resting against the bag. For me, it worked better to brew the dye materials in a small amount of water and then just add this concentrated liquid to the larger vat containing the material.
  
  
• Don't forget that dyes can be reused. Since the silk was in the cochineal bath for a very short amount of time, I ended up dyeing some linen as well before pouring it out, which made a ridiculously bright shade of lavendar! I also took the bugs out of the simmering water before I ever got around to squishing them, so they still have plenty of dye remaining, and they were easily dried out again for long-term storage.
  
  
• The pH of the water plays a very important role in what color you end up with. Madder and cochineal are both supposed to be red dyes (and apparently make beautiful reds for other people), but with my water, they made true orange and true purple. For the least amount of color shift, use rainwater or distilled water, or you can alter the pH by adding things like vinegar or chalk to the bath... but I haven't quite worked up to that yet!
  
  
• The color also varied depending on the type of fibers. Although cochineal produced similar purples on silk, linen, and wool, there was a huge difference between the colors that madder made depending on the type of fabric being dyed.
  
  
• Keep in mind that the color when wet is very different than the color when dry. If you are unsure about what the color is really looking like or shooting for a particular shade, snip off a little corner of the material while it is still in the bath and dry that sample with a hairdryer to check the final hue.
  
  
• If at first you don't succeed, dye, dye again! Colors can be over-dyed several times either with the same type of natural materials or with something completely different. Just remember to re-mordant each time, and you can just keep trying until you end up with a spectacular color. Many historical recipes call for multiple trips through the dyer's vat, so it's historically correct and really fun to experiment with different combinations.
  
  
• Relax and have fun! Basic natural dyeing may not be an exact science, and you have to be bit laid back about the color you are going to end up with, but this was definitely one of the most fun historical projects that I have tried so far. I am so excited about seeing the looks on people's faces when I tell them that I came up with this amazing color for my gown all by myself using roots and bugs! That is just so cool!

madder on silk	madder on un-mordanted linen	cochineal on linen
madder over-dyed with cochineal on silk