Workshop Prep in the Garden: Dye Bath

Today, the Secondary CFE team gathered at the garden to do some final preparations for the upcoming workshop. The primary focus was to gather our natural materials (a.k.a. buttercups), create the full batch of the dye bath ahead of time, and to conduct some tests for the pretreated fabric that we sourced. 

Starting off with gathering materials for our dye bath process, we needed to figure out a target weight for the amount of natural materials that would be used. In natural dyeing, this is done by first calculating the weight of the fiber/fabric that is being dyed, commonly known as the WOF. The weight of the dye materials is then calculated based on the % of the WOF.

For example, a flower dye with 150% WOF means we would need 1.5 times the weight of the fibre/fabric in flowers.

In researching online examples of natural dyeing with buttercups, we found a large range of "recipes" from 150% to 800% WOF, where higher concentrations of buttercups will yield deeper shades of the color. We set our initial goal somewhere in the middle at about 400% WOF, which with our WOF at about 284g, meant we needed to gather a total of 1.1kg in buttercups. 

From there, we had our rather ambitious goal and everyone went off with buckets in hand to pick as many buttercups as we could. We tried to avoid as much stems as possible to minimize the chances of the dye leaning towards a more green-ish tint. While I started my picking journey with scissors and trying to cut precisely, I ended up grabbing a stool and picking each one by hand instead, which really maximized the productivity. Of course, remember to wash your hands thoroughly when handling buttercups, as they contain toxins that can irritate your skin and stomach.

In the end, we decided to pivot from 400% WOF to about 200% WOF (~500-600g), crossing our fingers that it would still give us a decent result! Looking back at our output of buttercups, it was honestly pretty impressive! 

Once we had our fresh buttercups picked, we started to make our "dye teabags" with cheesecloth and some twine.  These will be simmered in the water for at least an hour to slowly extract its color, and the cheesecloth allows for a clean disposal of the natural materials after dyeing. To make the extraction better, we more finely chopped up the buttercups in the buckets, where you can even see the color starting to come out.

One potential idea we originally had was to also create paint from dried buttercups. While we ultimately decided on a different activity, we figured we could also grind up some of the dried buttercups with a mortar and pestle and add them to the dye bath for an extra boost of color. Check out the yellow staining on that pestle - gorgeous! Of course, make sure you do not use the mortar and pestle for food purposes after grinding the buttercups.

After we got our camp stove setup and water boiling, we added our "dye teabags" to our pot, and simmered for about an hour, lightly stirring occasionally. It's amazing to see the color change during the process and the deepening of the yellow, which can be monitored based on the color of the cheesecloth. 

After an hour of simmering the dye, we added in our test samples of our pretreated (mordanted) fabrics, and allowed it to simmer for another hour. We decided to experiment with some tie-dye effects as well, using some spare rubber bands to see if we could get some rad patterns (spoiler: seems like it totally works!). Once the fabrics has been simmering for about an hour, we rinsed it in some clean, cool water and left it out to hang dry in the sun. We expect it will probably change in color even as it dries, so we're curious to check back on it in the next few days!

While we were waiting during all the simmering, we decided to de-thorn and peel some blackberry stems, in hope of once again trying out the pentagonal basket weaving activity from our fiber arts day. Our hope was that if the fresh stem would be more malleable than twigs when weaving, but would still yield a durable basket structure as it dries. While it did end up being more malleable than the previous twigs we used, the holes of the base proved to be an persistent issue. We ended up "hand drilling" the holes to widen them a bit, and by that I mean literally twisting holes by hand with drill bits (in absence of an electric drill). This actually worked, but in the end our stems were just a touch short to finish off the basket! Regardless, we left it out to dry in the sun overnight and we're excited to see if this could be viable with longer stems!

Overall, we're feeling optimistic about the workshop, having fully prepped the dye bath and testing out some samples. While the final color was a surprise to us all, it shows that there can be a lot of experimentation and unpredictability in the natural dyeing process. Going through the labor of picking all those buttercups as well, we felt a great sense of pride just knowing that it actually worked, and it really makes you appreciate the level of involvement required in this process.