Saturday, June 23, 2018

Making Mordants-Fixatives

My project for a couple days now-I am slow these days-is to clean the utility room-it is a small room but totally packed.

  Two large-long Sears commercial deep freezers-which I have now gone through and defrosted. Washer and dryer and a deep utility sink. 
   My house has no storage space, no closets, no kitchen cupboards, no basement no garage you get the picture. So my boxes of canning jars sit in the small middle space of this room stacked high-until I get the hallway done, tiled and get my commercial style shelving up so I can finally organize my canning jars etc and other food stuffs. That will be very helpful to me.

   Anyways-I have a box with two large glass jugs that I put together for iron water and copper water-both for use as a mordant-fixative for natural dyeing on cottons, wool, silks. This is in this room as well.
     Learning that the Kitchen Witch makes and uses iron water for her fixative in her eco dyeing I needed to take a look at this. I would have to go back to my old blog at least 10 years-oh my how time flies-to know when I set this up. I did allot of natural dyeing back then along with allot of rust dyeing. I keep a big pile of rusty things under an oak tree nearby.
   I should have taken a photo but the iron water was no more-had turned to moldy water and the iron pieces in there were no longer rusty. Hubs said they looked like they had been blued ha ha.
   So of course all this was taken outdoors to empty clean and find new rusty objects and make new iron water-which will take up to 6 weeks. Here is a how to link I think instead of alum water I am going to use a spray bottle to spray my hemp papers lightly and then soak the leaves etc in the iron water before setting up the eco printing onto my papers.

   My copper mordant was pretty much evaporated and a little moldy too. Lovely blues though on the inside of the glass. I didn't want to mess with this right now so I just filled that one up with vinegar.

  The mimosa trees are prettier than they have been in several years. They must really like the hot humid temps we've had,they also went through several hard freezes in April. 
   My first batch is pretty much dry now. I took the short stems off the main stem and placed into a box to finish drying. I want to gather another batch. I also thought I would dry some of the flowers and see what I can do with them in paper making.
    I have lots of pine needles here so I am thinking of experimenting with them in paper making too perhaps the green ones as the dried will not break down but can be added in as textures.

  I needed a bit of a break so I decided to share this post about how to make iron water especially. Off to cleaning


  

6 comments:

  1. You have been busy Kathy. And I thought I had limited storage space but you really don't have extra space at all. But it must feel good to get those chores done. :) Happy rest of your weekend. Hugs-Erika

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    1. Hi Erika, this house was built in the 70s and I think this was the builders first house ha ha when the economy crashed in'08 we had stop working on the house and go back to work-now we are older-ugh
      I just don't worry about it anymore as we live in a beautiful place in the woods with the wildlife

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  2. I was SO glad you posted this, Kathy. I have jars of iron mordant AND copper mordant sitting in my basement, ready for inspiration. I like that we have such similar interests, and are on similar summertime paths. I also have a SILVER bucket set up with nothing more than aluminum foil, foil from a candy bar, and vinegar. It is a beautiful color when you see it in the right light.

    OFF topic, here, but I wanted to share with you, that I think I mentioned all my moulds were bad and I was no longer able to make paper. My friend Scott came over today and I asked him to make six for me so I could start making paper again. I have screening that is NOT rusty, which is what happened to the last moulds I made. I'm hoping we can do this sometime in the next three weeks, since his work schedule is murder right now. I'm going to start with paper pulp, because I still have SO much colored paper I have accumulated and sorted over time. Then I will try my hand at plant pulp once I feel confident, again.

    I also remembered size is used when people want to write on the paper using one of those fancy ink/calligraphy pens. That way the ink doesn't bleed into the paper, which doesn't happen if you use a regular ball point pen. To do this, you need to add PVA (white glue, like Elmers) to your water before you add your pulp. Thought you might like to know this.

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    1. Also, I think common grocery store gelatin can be used in paper pulp for sizing.

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  3. Yes, the foil is another mordant. I read about it on India Flint's blog where you place your fabric and leaves in a bottle of mordant (like silver foil, copper, iron, etc) and leave it for several weeks untouched. She said even apartment dwellers could do this because there is no smell, which apparently she gets when she does her eco-dyeing. I place strips of masking tape labeling the different mordants, and when I do my eco-dyeing, I add a date when I create the piece.

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