second year woad blues

Posted by Helen
I am often asked if second year woad gives blue and although I have done it in the past I thought it would be nice to have evidence!
A few days ago I cut about four second year plants of Isatis Tinctoria down to stop them flowering as I don't want them to cross pollinate with Chinese woad Isatis Indigotica which is in full flower.
As always I followed Jill Goodwin recipe from the Dyers Manual( Published by Batsford) so I ripped the leaves up and poured boiling water over them sufficient to cover the leaves , left them for about half and hour and then squeezed the leaves out and removed them leaving a brown liquid darker than the normal sherry colour I have got from first year leaves. I added about a 100ml of washing soda solution, {sodium carbonate) made by mixing 4 tablespoons of washing soda to 1 litre of water, which turned the liquid a sort of browny/green colour, beat thoroughly to oxygenate the water and precipitate the indigotin. Normally the froth turns blue but it did not show much sign of the blue froth this time suggesting that indogitin levels might be low. I added 1 teaspoon of thiourea dioxide and left for a further 20 minutes. The little vat was difficult to read as it was bright green and when I dyed fibres they went green, this was a yellow colour in the dye bath which washed off easily revealing the blue underneath. I added in the fibres shown and got as you can see pale blue on silk, on a textured yarn and quite a reasonable blue on the teeswater. I put the squeezed out leaves into a slow cooker and left overnight on the keep warm facility before adding teeswater curls and getting the resulting golden tan with a pinkish tinge.
So there you are you can get blue from second year woad leaves before they flower but the amount of blue you can get may be low.
Welcome to the new followers Manya , Danielle and Joybilee farm

Seeds

Posted by Helen
Last week I went round to Enys's house to have a look at the emerging dye plants mostly for the Woolfest in Cumbria in June but some will be big enough for Wonderwool Wales which is April 25th & 26th at the Royal Welsh ground at Builth Wells. The Japanese polygonum (Persicaria Tinctoria) has germinated well-over 60plants Enys said-plants like dyers chamomile (Anthemis Tinctoria ),coreopsis (Coreopis Tinctoria) and cosmos (Cosmos sulphureus) are as usual romping away, and the woads are better this year than last. One of the plants that is doing much better than ever before is safflower, carthemis tinctorius. Enys was furious at the madder -the seed tray on the top left of the picture of seed trays as none of the madder had germinated after two weeks. Over the years she has tried various ways to get it to grow, she tells me, but it is always difficult. I lent forward to inspect the reluctant seeds and saw one just starting to push it's way through. Time for champagne? I suggested hopefully. We went back to celebrate with coffee.
Incidentally the nearly flowering woad is Chinese woad (Isatis Indigotica) and as mine is flowering too we should have plenty of seeds for next year. The Chinese woad we have planted this year is still from the original seed sent to me by Annee Silk in Canada who sent them twice when the first lot did not germinate. Chinese woad (Isatis Indigotica) produces more indigotin (about twice as much)as does the European woad (Isatis Tinctoria). The comparison data is here

While I was there Enys proudly showed me lots of robust Baptisia Australis-"what dye colour do we get from it"? She asked. My mind went blank. However researching through my archives I found I wrote a post about the Baptisia and you can find what I did here!

Welcome to my all new followers.

Indigofera Tinctoria

posted by Helen

Yesterday I went over to Enys's house and she carefully pruned her nurtured and much cared for indigofera plant. Enys loves this plant; she says it is partly because it folds it's leaves up every night, but it is also because getting it to germinate proved challenging and growing it even with a greenhouse has been difficult. Now, however, she has got the hang of it and there are two other seedlings coming along nicely on her kitchen windowsill. It germinates in the greenhouse but seems happier in the kitchen and as she has an Aga the temperature probably stays fairly even. This is a plant that has been really looked after just as if it was baby which explains why she won't let me near it with her pruning shears and her DH ,an expert gardener, was drawn into a discussion on how much to cut off without endangering the plant.

The leaves weighed 100g, 76g after I had stripped them off the stalks. I ripped them up and put them in an 1 litre pot with a lid and placed them in a larger pan. I covered them with water and placing in a double boiler and heated till 60 degrees C

There was very little colour in the little vat so I left it overnight as a member from Natural Dyes Online had suggested. This morning ( Sunday) I had a look at it and it was still barely more than pale yellow so I chopped the leaves more finely and reheated in the double boiler and repeated to about 80 degrees C. The water was now murky yellow green , but I put 1 teaspoon of washing soda and had a pH of 9.8: too high I wonder whether the washing soda which is a new batch is unusually strong, and whisked till it was very frothy. The froth was quite white . By this time I was becoming convinced that there was no indigotin at all, but I added 1/2 teaspoon of thiourea dioxide to the vat and left it for ten minutes and put in a few strands of throwsters waste, which looked white as it went in rather than yellow. Now I was convinced that there was nothing there and was wondering how to tell Enys that her precious plant had produced nothing. when I pulled out the silk. To my astonishment the edge of the silk turned a turquoise blue. I tried re dipping and finally I got a pale blue silk and a pale turquoise blue 10 g piece of wool. I am a bit surprised how turquoise they look and felt the result has been more like the colour obtained by dyeing with persicaria (polygonum) tinctoria.

So there was not much indigotin there but some and I feel very pleased to have tried as I have now successfully used all the four plants that we grow and that will give blue. I wonder whether the lack of sun has been a factor but it is more probably that it is a tropical plant growing in conditions which are far from ideal for it. Well I will try again next year provided of course Enys lets me.