Naturally Dyed Green Without Indigo Part 2

Natural Dye RecipesNatural Dye Tutorials

Apr 14

After I wrote the first post about different ways to achieve green without indigo I thought of another method that I wanted to test as well. I’m getting my ass kicked with farm work right now (in a good way) but had to make time to give this method a try so I can stop wondering and thinking about it : ) This method is for white fiber such as cotton or bleached linen. It’s basically the same as the iron shifting method I shared in that first post but with the order of processes switched up. You begin with scoured cloth (always begin with scoured cloth), then soak it in a tannin bath, then mordant with alum, then shift the cloth in an iron bath to achieve a soft gray color. The goal is to turn the cloth the approximate color of unbleached linen and then over dye it with a yellow dye to achieve green. If you can master that soft gray linen color with tannin and iron, which is pretty simple, then I think this method has incredible potential.

Recipe

After scouring set up a tannin bath. For this experiment I used myrobalan tannin because I knew I could achieve the perfect gray with it. Another tannin I know would work is gall tannin but I’d probably use it at a slightly lower WOF ratio. I used myrobalan at 25% WOF and steeped the fabric in the bath all day. Then I mordanted with alum at 12% plus soda ash at 2% WOF and let it steep overnight. After this process the fabric was a soft butter yellow.

Next I set up an iron bath at 3% WOF to shift the myrobalan butter yellow color to a gray shade. The fabric wasn’t in the bath for very long at all before the it shifted to gray. In the photo below the fabric is still wet so it’s much darker than it would be if it were dry.

Finally the exciting part where I got to test my hypothesis! I chose weld as my yellow dye and set up a bath at 100% WOF. I boiled the weld for an hour to extract the dye, then added the fiber and within minutes it was striking as green just as I expected it would. I believe any yellow dye would work and also that different ones will yield different shades of green. I have a big bag of onion skins saved up and my next green experiment will involve them.