When the big day arrived, I had more company than initially expected, with two of our beloved friends staying with us and keen to try indigo, and more coming over. I have to say, I am intimidated by indigo and it was a holiday project that kept me nervous, planning this indigo dyeing day. What if it didn’t work out? What if my ignorance trumped my effort? What if people were bored? What if nothing worked and people’s things were ruined? The funny thing about fret is that so often it has me focused on myself and my overdeveloped sense of responsibility, and that’s neither sensible, nor fun, nor realistic. How could I even temporarily forget how wonderful my friends are, in the face of fret? Everyone who came knew at least some of the other folk and it was such a generous and friendly gathering. One of my near and dear spent the day taking photographs, so a big thanks to her for those that follow…
We practised our skills at getting fabric into and out of the dye without adding needless oxygen.
This time I had a dependable thermometer and used it!
I also now have a Ph meter. My dear Dad asked what I wanted for my birthday last year and when I said I wanted a Ph meter but wasn’t sure where to get one he had the answer!!! You don’t know him, but eBay, my friends, is the answer to a shocking number of things for Dad…
There wasn’t just the fructose vat. I have decided that aiming for fermentation and fructose vats is a good long term goal for environmental, health and all kinds of other reasons (pure curiosity, for a start…) and I am growing woad and indigofera australis and Japanese indigo. However, I have decided that in the interim, colour run remover (mostly sodium hydrosulphite) can rescue failures in my judgment and experience and save wastage of indigo. Since I have some synthetic indigo, I decided to use that in any hydrosulphite vats as it may not be so suitable for fermentation or fructose vats. There was a lot of fabric when everyone piled in–so I set up two hydrosulphite vats and was delighted not to need to use hydrosulphite to troubleshoot the fructose vat.
This is something-or-other coming out of one colour run remover vat quite yellow and beginning to turn blue as the air strikes it. For these vats, I tried Jenny Dean’s recipe for a colour run remover indigo vat from Wild Colour. It worked really well and uses washing soda, a much milder alkali than some proposed in other books. It’s also designed for colour run remover and not pure hydrosulphite–and that is what I had. The fructose vat smells MUCH better!
I love this process of transformation! The best item of all for this effect was a pair of pants tied around a length of garden hose. It was long enough to be yellow at one end, green in the middle and various shades of blue as it slowly emerged from the pot. My friends had been out researching techniques for resist–so there was stitching, wrapping, bundling, string, thread, rubber bands–and even wax resist, some applied with a biscuit cutter and some freehand.
With three vats going, and regular monitoring of temperature and Ph and so on, the scene at the clothes line kept changing.
There were whole-garment makeovers, a purpose made bag, scrap fabrics, an opportunistic bag makeover and the pieces for a pair of pants yet to be made.
The shades kept changing–wet to dry and dip to dip.
…Until finally we had done all we could do and time to head to our various homes started to arrive. Then there was a lot of undoing and exclaiming… and I’ll save that for another post!
Local & Bespoke 
