How To Dye With Woad Plants

04 May, 2021

The process of dyeing with woad is similar to dyeing with the indigo plant. The dye of woad is extracted from its mature leaves.

Plants Used In Dyeing Woad Weld Madder Sumach Plant Illustration Plants Botanical Illustration

Pre-mordant your fibre with alum.

How to dye with woad plants. But the harvest should be done before the flower-stalk emerge as the flowers mush in the extraction vat. Buy woad pigment here. In general youll need to watch for the specific species of woad youre growing to determine the best time to harvest the leaves.

You can use the exhausted leaves to make a pink dye. Whisking may not produce any blue froth but ignore this continue as usual. 80 C for 10 minutes.

You can extract the dye to store as a powder. Woad plants are ready for harvest in the summer months. Straining the woad liquid 6.

Jill Goodwin who pioneered this method for modern dyers gives excellent directions for this type of vat in A Dyers Manual. Customer comments I have been experimenting with spinning my. The leaves are crushed and originally left to ferment in a vat for over a year.

Cool the woad dye down as quickly as possible so that the leaves dont breakdown too much. This oxygen-free dye bath is called a vat. The pigment contained in the leaves is not soluble in water so to be dissolved it must undergo a chemical change - reduction.

The pH of the vat was maintained with the urine of the male work force. Its hard to believe that these obviously green leaves contain such a vivid blue pigment and I wonder how the first people actually discovered it. Infusing woad leaves in water around 80 degrees Celcius.

Extract the yellow dye compounds from the yarrow flowers using a slightly alkaline extraction vat. Woad balls can be used in the same way as fresh woad leaves except that the leaves should remain in the vat throughout. The vat itself will not look like the more usual woad or indigo vats but this does not seem to be of any importance.

Harvesting woad leaves 2. Second year plants can also be harvested for dye. Simmer for about 10 minutes.

To formulate the dye the plant was cultivated and the leaves picked in the first year. Woad will be ready to harvest in July all the way through September. In some areas woad can be harvested until November but the onset of fall frosts will likely lessen the color.

Woad needs lots of nitrogen so fertilize with a high nitrogen food of dried blood meal or hoof and horn meal. Simmer the fibre in the dye vat for at least an hour. If you dont have woad plants you can buy powdered woad and all the other chemicals needed on this site.

Take the leaves from the base of the plant and then cut them into small pieces. Fill a 10 litre pan about half full of water and turn the heat up high to bring it up to 90 degrees centigrade. So many of our past discoveries seem to be purely accidental so I dont doubt that it was the same with Woad.

First removed from the dye pot it combines with oxygen in the air and reverts to the insoluble blue. Submerge the torn or cut leaves in a stainless steel pan of water and bring up to a temperature of 175F 80C. There are several ways of dyeing with woad.

You can make a fermentation vat. Aerating the woad liquid 8. Chop or tear the leaves rinse off the dirt and leave them to drain.

Steeping the woad leaves 4. The first step is to harvest leaves and you will need a lot. 12 Steps to Extraction of Woad Dye now on 2 pages Page 1.

Adding soda ash Page 2. Turn off the heat and leave the fibre in the vat until it is cool. You can dye with freshly picked leaves.

Dyeing with woad balls To sum up. Harvesting woad leaves opens a new page 1. Cut off leaves and wash them thoroughly.

Tear or cut up the leaves and then steep them in water that is 176 degrees F. The woad industry of the past supported what I imagine to be a coveted job of drinking beer urinating. Tearing the woad leaves 3.

Making woad dye is a lengthy process. Harvesting and Dyeing with Woad Isatis tinctoria or Isatis indigotica I use the chemical vat method using fresh leaves as outlined by Rita Buchanan in A Weavers Garden and A Dyers Garden. You should wait for the leaf to reach about 6 inches in length and about 40 leaves are growing on each plant.

After the flower starts blooming the woad flowers can be used for direct contact dyeing along with any seeds that form. I was only given them a couple of days ago and since then I have been doing various bits of research to try to establish the best way to work with the woad. Extracting the woad pigment opens a new page 7.

Cooling the woad liquid 5. You can store it as a liquid. Her description of The Great Woad Hunt is entertaining informative and inspiring.

These plants should be harvested after two weeks of warm sunny weather. After being given a bunch of woad plants on their second year by a friend I decided it was time to try dyeing with fresh woad leaves. Learn more about the Woad plant Isatis tinctoria a famous natural dye and source of natural indigo dye used for several thousand years see woad history in Europe and the Middle EastWoad dye extraction produces natural indigo dye from the dark blue-green spinach-like woad leaves.

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