Color mixing

Using My Studio Formulas Set of Cards

~ Catharine Ellis ~ 16 Comments

It’s been a busy summer, but it’s time to follow up on my earlier post about the recently released Studio Formulas Set dye recipe cards. I received my own set of dye and recipe cards from Schiffer just before Joy Boutrup arrived from Denmark for a class we taught together at Penland School of Crafts in June. Teaching together was a great opportunity to receive some feedback about the set. 

Every recipe from the book is represented by a single card. Additonal colored cards illustrate individual dyes and color mixing. We opted to use wool as “the fiber of choice” when creating the initial printed cards as it such a commonly used fiber. The dye cards in the collection document the most important dyes: indigo, madder, cochineal, and weld along with a couple other tannin based dyes.

The dye color cards are beautiful and just as I had imagined they would be. Schiffer did a superb job of reproducing my dyed wool samples in print. Color matching is perfect! I was told that it took several tries to get it just right. I can appreciate that kind of care and accuracy – the same care and precision that I put into my dyeing.  Although the cards are durably coated, it is easy to write on them with a ball point pen or ‘Sharpie” and there is room for personalized notes on the back of each card.

The cards come in a box that is custom made for the set.  It even has a magnetic clasp to keep it closed. BUT for me to get the most use out of the cards,  I removed the cards from the original box and placed them into a much larger file box. This allows plenty of room for flipping through the various recipe cards, adding tabs for easy reference, AND for adding my own customized cards to the collection. You might want to do the same.

Studio Formulas Set moved into a plastic file box, purchased for less than $10, with lots of room to expand. 

Having individually printed recipe cards is proving to be very convenient in my own dye studio. Instead of dripping dye all over my book, I now can pull out the required card and work from that. And, YES, I do use the recipes from the book and I don’t have every one of them memorized!

Studio Formulas Set moved into a plastic file box, purchased for less than $10, with lots of room to expand.
Multiple folds of Recipe #34: Indigo Print Paste

The use of cards containing easily referenced materials and samples has changed the way I work over the last several years. As you know, I am seemingly always testing dyes and process. Once I complete an initial set of tests (recorded in detail with samples in my lab notebook), I then mount the final samples on a card, filed for easy access and reference. 

Here is a great example of how useful this process can be: 

I recently I went to my dye shelf to look for pomegranate rind for a specific dye project. I found that I had 3 different extracts and two jars of ground pomegranate rind (including one that I had ground myself). Were they different? the same? After making samples of all the various pomegranate dyes (on both cellulose and wool)  I can now objectively see the subtle differences between each of these dye sources and make a better informed decision.

Having of a record on hand of the dyes in the studio is an essential discipline that takes the guess work out of the dyeing process. Whenever I obtain a new dyestuff (purchased or grown myself) my goal is to complete a test dye on the appropriate textile material. Sometimes that means dyeing several samples as I explore various depths of shade on different fibers. 

Documentation of the various pomegranate dyes on wool.

If one chooses to add actual cloth/fiber samples to the box, available space fills quickly. Thus, a larger, file box quickly becomes a necessity. Currently I have one box earmarked for documenting protein fibers and am building another that is dedicated to cellulose.

My personal (and expanding) box of dye samples on wool

Careful measurement of the dye used per weight of textile can result in greater control over the palette of color and discourages wasting of  dye. It has the potential of bringing natural dye to a level beyond experiment and discovery: controlled color. 

When Joy and I taught together at Penland in June, we used the cards throughout the session as a quick reference for dyeing in the class. By seeing (and understanding) the function of color mixing with natural  dyes, students were better able to predict the colors that they would ultimately achieve. I am sure that you will also find them a useful tool in your personal studio practice. 

Student experiments in weaving and dyeing at “Show and Tell” on the last day of our class at Penland.

Dye Cards in a Box!

~ Catharine Ellis ~ 20 Comments

It has been a while since I have posted here, but I assure you that I am staying busy, still learning, and have been developing some new projects and ways of working. 

Last year, Schiffer Publishing Co. approached Joy and me about making the the recipes that are included in The Art and Science of Natural Dyes more accessible to the user. A we thought about how to accomplish this, I was reminded that in my household kitchen, I use the same recipes over and over again and used a recipe box and cards regularly. Maybe this would be a good idea for the dye kitchen as well. 

This invitation to increase the usefulness of the recipes seemed like a perfect opportunity to share the dye color work that I had been developing for many months in the studio and has finally resulted in The Studio Formulas Set for The Art and Science of Natural Dyes: 84 Cards with Recipes and Color Swatches. It is scheduled to be released by the end of June.

In 2020 I posted about Dominique Cardon’s newly published Workbook, Antoine Janot’s Colours. This little book has been a great inspiration to me. It was surprising and enlightening to find that Janot’s full palette of  55 colors was made with only 4 dyes: indigo, madder, cochineal, and weld. That bit of information has mostly changed the way I am now thinking about dyeing and color. 

When I first began using natural dyes I thought it was important to have/use/stock every dyestuff and dye extract that I could get my hands on; I didn’t want to miss any opportunity! The large number of dyes on the shelf always led to confusion when I got ready to dye. At some point,  I finally did lightfast tests on all the dyes on my shelf , making fastness to light a criteria for selection. Ultimately, I ended up with a much smaller number of dyes I was willing to use. Those are the dyes that we include in The Art and Science of Natural Dyes. 

The documentation in Janot’s workbook helped me to take color and color mixing to the next step, which was truly learning to master my dye colors. 

The first thing that I felt I needed to do was learn to control the various shades of indigo. Janot used 8 different shades of blue, each with its own name. I had to learn how to consistently achieve different shades with my fermentation indigo vats. My goal was 6 different values.  Dyeing consistent blues is like capturing a moment in time, as the vats change over their life span. My first fermentation vat was over 2 years old before it finally gave me the pale blue that I needed for some of the color mixes. 

The 8 shades of indigo blue used by Janot

The 6 values of indigo blue chosen for use on the cards and subsequent color mixing

So, I began dyeing a series of predictable, repeatable color using indigo and a handful of other dyes using various depths of shade.

 

Various shades of yellow from weld

Various shades of indigo + a strong weld result in one set of green colors

The same shades of indigo with a weak yellow results in a different set of greens.

My lab notebooks are fabulous repositories of all of my testing (I am now on volume #10) but they are not always the most convenient place to go for a quick color reference. So, I began putting my color mixes and repeatable dye colors on cards – the  kind that you can file in a box for easy reference. And then I began USING that reference. It was at my fingertips and ready to look at whenever needed

My own first set of studio dye cards

I realized that this was also a perfect opportunity to combine the recipes from The Art and Science of Natural Dyes with a set of color mix cards, that will give the dyer some basic color mixing information. 

The dyes included in the color mix box are: indigo, cochineal madder, weld (and a little bit of the tannin dyes: pomegranate rind and cutch )

I have used my “box of colors” in teaching over the last months. It is rewarding to see students refer to the cards, make their own color choices, and their ability to achieve very similar results. 

Teaching at Sanborn Mills Farm using my own set of color cards.
Sara Goodman, at Sanborn Mills Farms, referring to my own box of samples.
Sara’s dyeing, based on cards references that utilize indigo, over-dyed with mordant dyes.

To follow soon: ideas of how to best use your own set of “Box of Cards” in your own studio dye practice.

Black: An Improvisation

~ Catharine Ellis ~ 31 Comments

I recently took on a small weaving commission that required the use of black wool yarn. For a brief moment I contemplated purchasing the wool in the required color and then decided that I could dye it. I was surprised at how easy it was to achieve a rich, deep black color on the wool using only indigo and madder. 

Commissioned weaving using wool yarns dye with indigo blue, madder red, black from indigo and madder

It inspired me to continue my current series of color studies, woven in cotton and linen, with an in-depth exploration of black dyes. 

Initially, I wanted to achieve all the black hues without the use of an iron mordant. My years of mixing hues with primary colors gave me the confidence to believe that I could mix a good black for cellulose using 3 primary colors: blue, red, and yellow. The key was going to be finding the correct proportions. 

The first step was to build up a deep layer of indigo blue (usually 8-10 dips in the vat) followed by a mordant, and finally red and yellow dyes. That red could be madder or cochineal but I chose to use only madder, since that is what I am growing in the garden.  My preferred yellow is weld.  Each different combination results in a subtle variation. Some “blacks” are more purple, while others are a bit more green, or brown. I began using black walnut  and cutch as a substitute for the madder and weld and sometimes added madder or weld to those.  Each is a distinct hue, and definitely in the “black” family. I am confident of the lightfastness of these hues because of the primary dyes that have been used. 

Dark indigo alone, on far left + combination of cutch and madder resulted in a neutral black
close up of “black” hues in the series on cotton and linen fabrics

These multiple shades of black, put me in mind of the paintings in The Rothko Chapel in Houston, which is the site of a series of large large “black” canvases by the artist, Mark Rothko. These black canvases are painted with layers of crimson, alizarin, and black.

But no exploration of black would be complete without some experiments using tannin and iron. Instead of building up layers of primary colors, I soaked the textile in a gall nut tannin bath, followed by a short immersion in an iron bath. I wanted to use as little iron as possible, but still achieve a very dark shade. I decided that 3% weight of fiber would be the limit of the amount of iron I would use.

Most often, I use ferrous acetate instead of ferrous sulfate because it is less damaging to the fiber. Cellulose fibers are are somewhat tolerant of ferrous sulfate so I did experiments with both. That is where I was most surprised! Without exception, the ferrous acetate resulted in deeper colors than the same amount of ferrous sulfate. 

Why? I wasn’t sure. So I consulted my colleague, Joy Boutrup, who always knows these things. 

“I think the reason for the grey instead of black with iron sulfate is due to the higher acidity of the sulfate. The acetate is much less acidic. The  tannin complex cannot form to the same degree as with acetate.”

The pH of my ferrous sulfate solution was 4. The ferrous acetate was pH 6. (My tap water is from a well and is a slightly acidic pH6.)

The grey and blacks achieved with the tannin and iron are quite one-dimensional compared with those that result from a mix of colors and not nearly as interesting, Yet they are likely a more economical approach to achieving black; the multiple indigo dips, mordanting, and over-dyeing takes considerably more time and materials than an immersion in a tannin and an iron bath. 

Always observing always learning, here in the mountains of North Carolina…

Studio image of completed woven panels