For this week’s sustainable systems, we experimented with the natural dye kit. I decided to dye my wool with beets and below is the process of dying my wool, pictures included.
First, I chopped up the beets into big blocks and threw them in a big pot with just enough water to cover the beets and boiled them. I then took out the beet blocks and poured the beet juice in a mason jar and put it in the freezer to let it cool.
Whilst I let the dye cool, I began to prepare my wool by washing it with dish soap in warm water. As I will be making 8 samples (6 used for each mordant, one undyed and one dyed but not soaked with mordants afterwards), I divided the wool into 8 parts first and then washed them one by one.
I then started to prepare my mordants. I labelled each mordant with the name and pH and for the special mordant, I used coca cola. I made sure to wear my mask and gloves with working with the mordants.
Once everything was set up, I took out the beet dye from the freezer and started dying the wool by dunking it into the mason jar and letting the wool soak in the dye for about 5-1o minutes each. After which I would take out the wool and squeeze the dye out and let it dry a bit
Once the wool was dyed and ready, I put each wool in the six different mordants and let that sit for another 10 minutes.
Once the time was up, I pulled them out, again wearing gloves and a mask, I rinsed each piece of wool with water and laid them out to dry overnight. Below is the end result, including the wool bit I tried to felt.
