The Magic of Indigo

The magic of indigo

 

Watching the oxidation of indigo is always magical to me. I never cease to be amazed seeing cloth and yarn turn from yellow-green, to green to blue. But, when I began my indigo journey, it was not magical, but rather perplexing and annoying.

I first started experimenting with indigo almost 20 years ago. In the fall of 2007, I was in my first year of nursing school, having decided to change professions, and I found myself isolated in a small Vermont town without a vehicle, but with some of my craft items. Vermont winters are long, gray and cold, so having knitting and spinning project was a much needed reprieve from dense medical-related text books and the long dark.

I felt confident in the use of commercial acid-fast dyes (I had been tie-dying since I was a youth), but wanted to expand my skills to the use of vegetable, mineral and insect-derived dyes. I felt that it was apropos, given my inclination to use only natural fibers, to start using completely nature-derived pigments for dying my hand-spun yarns and tie-dye projects.

I had done a little preliminary research on the use of indigo and decided to order a small amount to experiment with. What arrived was a small bag of blue chunks that smelled… odd. I prepared a small dye pot (a stainless steel sauce pan, really) with water and added a few of the indigo chunks and let them simmer for a spell, occasionally stirring the solution with a slatted steel spoon. I had a square of linen to dip into the dye bath, submerged it and let that simmer for about 20-30 minutes. I stirred this intermittently, feeling dubious about what I was seeing in the grainy-blue water. I let the hankie steep another 30 minutes and pulled it out to assess the color. The once white hankie was an uneven dusty-blue color, not unpleasant, but not what I was hoping for (and it certainly didn’t look like the photos I’d seen of the rich blue color indigo was supposed to impart). I also noticed that the indigo chunks in the dye bath hadn’t all dissolved; they were soft enough to squeeze between my thumb and forefinger. I proceeded rubbing some of the small, soft indigo pellets on the linen to see if that made a darker color. It didn’t really. I rinsed the hankie with fresh water and noticed that the color wasn’t adhering to the fiber too well either. I was disappointed in the result, and clearly needed to do some more research.

Eventually, I ran across one blog post where someone else had stated that they had to do “a lot of rubbing” of the indigo on their textile to get the color to (at least somewhat) adhere. It was good to know that I wasn’t the only indigo experimenter who had done the same thing. After some additional time online I ended up connecting with a fellow (a Canadian) in Japan, via his website and blog, who had lived there for a couple decades who was a highly skilled fiber artist. I ended up learning a great deal from him about preparing, processing and using indigo, as well as a few traditional techniques for dyeing cloth and silk processing.

 

He was generous in sharing his knowledge with me, and with some coaching from him I returned to my indigo dye project a couple weeks later. I learned I had gone about the process all wrong, that because of the nature, the chemistry of indigotin (the pigment in indigo), which is insoluble in water, I actually needed a reduction-oxidation process in order for the color “to work.” This meant that I needed specific chemicals that would sequester oxygen in the water that would make the indigotin soluble. Only then, after dipping the fiber in the reduced indigo bath, and then exposing the fiber to atmospheric oxygen, the pigment would revert back to its insoluble form (i.e., oxidize) and adhere to the fiber and reveal its true color.

I placed an order for soda ash, thiourea and slacked lime. I was all in.

 

After gaining experience with indigo dyeing, my fellow indigo-user in Japan invited me to come and help him with a series of weeks-long workshops he offered at his home, which was an antique converted silk processing barn in a village about two hours outside of Tokyo, where folks from around the world would come and stay and learn natural dyeing techniques, use of indigo and other vegetable dyes, shibori, katazome, weaving and kumihimo. During these workshops I was able to connect with other artists and gain hands-on experience learning traditional skills for dyeing cloth and yarn, new vegetable dye sources, sericulture and resist dyeing. I was even able to tour a fabric printing warehouse and use a rare, traditional, fermented indigo vat. In all, I was able to spend two months there gaining new skills and immersing myself in the culture of Japan.

 

After my time there, I was much more adept with using indigo and was able to start offering workshops on indigo dyeing to others. I now maintain my own indigo vat pretty much wherever I go. I find it useful for over-dying colors on clothing I’m not fond of but like the style of. It’s excellent for dyeing used clothes and covering up stains.

If you’re just starting out or wanting to use natural dyes, but feel intimidated by the plethora of information out there, I recommend starting your journey by reading about the use of plants that impart your favorite color/s to cloth and fiber. Some of those plants may be in your neighborhood and you can forage for them. Some may be available through retailers (we’re fortunate to have a local retailer, Paradise Fibers, that has everything you would need to begin exploring). Reach out to other artists and make connections with folks who share an interest in fiber arts and natural dyes. There are thousands of plants, insects, fungi and minerals, and hundreds of processes and mordants, that can be used to achieve the color you want, and even colors that are revealed only with UV light.

 

I have always felt that using natural dyes is a discovery process, so don’t feel discouraged if your project doesn’t have the results you want. You can always bleach it out, dye over it or start again.

 

Happy dyeing!