T Stands for Tuesday & My First Attempt: Dyeing with Fresh Grown Indigo

       T Stands for Tuesday, is where we gather together with a drink related post. You are most welcome to join us, just include a photo of your beverage in your blog post, link up and visit everyone.  
    Our hostess is Bleubeard and Elizabeth-click on the link in my right hand column.

  I decided over the weekend that Monday was going to be my indigo dye day. I reread the instructions-link in my previous post and below- and washed the silk, and wool with special soap for this step, then the next step is to mordant. I did the silk and wool seperately. So that was all ready to go. I also gathered everything I needed for dye day.
  I have not been to the resale shops in sometime now to search out silk clothing to dye. In my stash though I found a sleeveless silk blouse, a crepe silk scarf blank I bought from Dharma Trading (they carry many many clothing blanks for dye projects), and a silk scarf that a friend had given to me as she heard I was eco dyeing etc. This last scarf was stained, but had a woven print, fringe, double thickness and was marked 100% silk. However, after dyeing the fringe was not silk as it did not take the dye but dyed over all of the stains. 

  This ended up being probably a 9 hour day from start to finish. Happy with the silk-especially one piece, but when I got to the second step for the wool-a total let down. I will get to that in a bit, but I don't remember ever being so upset with myself for not understanding chemistry so did not know what to do. I almost wrote our CJ to ask Mr CJ the chemist as what to do but decided they were probably both at work-and this was a time issue as well to solve this problem so the dye bath would still be good.

I took photos of my dye day-click to enlarge full size for better viewing

I had two nice large Japanese Indigo plants that I grew from seed. I later learned one must Not fertilize these plants-I think that is what killed all of my other plants as I had around a dozen. 

After cutting them down to the base-one must pick all the leaves off as the stems have no dye in them Depending on the weather they should grow enough leaves for another dye batch.

I ended up with a canning kettle full of leaves

After picking the leaves one must dye immediately-I thought this was a nifty technique that was simple-whirl up in blender with very cold water and ice-I added lots of crushed ice

After this is completed-set up a strainer with cheesecloth and strain out the indigo leaf bits-this was time consuming

Having experience with natural dyeing-I have learned there is only so much of the prettiest dye available so I have learned to add my favorite piece in first-and then the rest. So I chose the crepe silk scarf to add first, then the blouse, and then the other scarf

  I followed the recipe-instructions from this post 

I am someone that does Not like to wear gloves-I only wear them if I just really need to. I did dig out a pair to be ready to wear when I  put the silk into the dye pot-but when I was just adding leaves to the ice water in the blender my hands turned blue ha ha  At this point I was confident I would get colors 
    It pretty much all scrubbed off now except for my nails.

This was my Wow and double Wow moment for the day. Beautiful colors  These are wet after being rinsed, dipped again, and rinsed-hung to dry so will change when dry

This is the crepe silk scarf from Dharma Trading-and is the only piece that pretty much remained this color when dry

This piece is the other scarf-It dyed over all of the stains, but like I said the fringe must have been an added synthetic which did not dye Both of these scarves were nice and long.

The sleeveless blouse-and looking at the photo below, you can see the stitching must have been a synthetic so did not dye. 
     Now I understand why on Dharma's site it says which clothing pieces have threads that will dye Never thought it would be that noticeable but it is.

close up of the silk blouse wet

I just now took a photo of these pieces mostly dry-and it is amazing how much color difference in the two pieces I added after the first scarf. They dried to a pretty slate grey-blue I guess I would call the color now

The scarf to the left kept the pretty color-the crepe silk scarf-and next to it is the blouse on the right

This is the scarf that had the stains-actually turned out pretty

Ok now to the very very disappointing second step.



   According to the instructions-link above-I added the pulp back into the dye pot-brought it to the correct temperature and held for 2 hours.  Next step was to add bicarbonate of soda one tablespoon at a time til I reached the ph of 9. I started at ph 7  well teaspoon after teaspoon-stirring after each addition and then checking the ph each time the ph started going backwards to ph 6 ugh now what to do??-if I was someone who gets panic attacks I would have gone into one at this point.
   So I thought bicarbonate of soda was the same thing as baking soda?? googling it not sure now if it is the same or not--at least if it  is the same thing, for some reason didn't work for this dye bath  
     So at this point I was at a loss Did not know what to do to get my ph 9

   I added a little vinegar which didn't help-first time dyeing I felt totally incompetent.  
    I was already losing the color in the dye pot and losing the temperature as well-so I just added the next chemical and added just one of my handspun wool skeins-figured if nothing else I might get a green shade.
    Took this photo after about 30 minutes-I am just going to let it soak awhile and then rinse.

   I just looked at it again, and this skein is getting a darker green-will see what happens after the rinses. and a bit of an update after a couple hours it is actually a pretty soft green so I decided to just add the second skein of wool to the pot. Going to let sit overnight
    


Sooooo needless to say I am happy but frustrated at the same time with my dye day-I know there is so much to learn about indigo-but for an easy dye method and not needing to make up a fermented vat-I think dyeing on the silk was pretty neat-blended fresh leaves with ice and water no heat involved. 
     Elizabeth and Barbara I think you would enjoy this first part of the process.
     I am wondering now if one could use wool in the first step instead of silk-may need to try that.
   I did try to write a comment on the link with the instructions to the author-but said was not accepting comments.

So if anyone knows what I can use to bring up the ph in an indigo dye pot-I would love to know thanks

   I received two beautiful atc's this past week from our T Party-thanks so much again
   I will write a seperate post to share my gifted atc's.
    I really appreciate your thoughtfulness-I had fun making the atc's-so hope to make a couple more in the coming weeks to share. I have been saving my tea bags-those were fun to work with and stamp on to. 
   Those of you that make art with the tea bags-how do you cut them open to get the loose tea out? I have tried a small slit or cut the bottom off-how do you do it? thanks

   For my drink share-I hadn't made myself a mixed drink for awhile so decided to make me a huckleberry margarita over the weekend. I used the huckleberry syrup (has little bits of the berries in it too) I bought in Yellowstone last year, and added Patron tequila and orange liqueur over ice and water

For cuteness:

Happy T Day everyone!! So glad you dropped by