Madder and madder

Rubia tinctorum & Rubia cordifolia, Garance de teinturiers et garance ?, indische Krapp u.echte Färberröte , rubia ? y rubia rota, dhá mhadar

Now I really need help with the other languages! Anyone?

I decided to try both “regular” madder and also R. cordifolia (as the latter’s cheaper). I purchased some powdered samples of both varieties and tried them on commercial yarn, mordanted with 10% alum and also with some calcium carbonate added to turn the dyebath alkaline. I couldn’t be sure of this, as the pH paper didn’t change colour, but I added more than the 6g per 100g dyestuff to make sure.

The R. tinctorum is on the left and the cordifolia on the right. From bottom to top it goes thusly: 50% wof, 100% wof, exhaust bath. The cordifolia at full strength gave what I’d call “Indian red” after seeing this tone on so many throws and other items from the sub-continent; the colours in real life are a bit deeper. The top ball was thrown into two exhaust baths, as the dusky pink wasn’t so much to my liking.

With the tinctorum, the full strength gave me what I’d expected, or near enough.

All skeins needed a fair number of rinses to get the particles out of them (it went on the garden); their individual shade was probably twice as dark when coming out of the dyebath, due to the particles sticking to the fibre, but the rinse water was only coloured by the waste particles and no waste/unattached dye.

So, will I use madder again? Not unless I buy a larger quantity from overseas to make it economically viable. When hanging the skeins to dry, the following came to mind: “Avocado skins… avocado pits… Eucalyptus sideroxylon… Eucalyptus cineria…” However, a worthwhile experiment with usable results.

Three rag rugs

trois tapis de chiffon, drei Flickenteppiche, tres alfombras de trapo, trí ruga stiallacha

The French sounds suitably fashionable, the German commonly practical, the Spanish somewhat more exotic and the Irish quite comfortable for a language I’m still learning. Slowly. (Two days later: found out when nouns follow numbers in Gaelic, they stay in the singular).

I’d made a couple of rag rugs some years ago and was amazed at i.) how much warp they required and ii.) how quickly they wove up. The first has become a foot mat under the loom pedals, whilst the second is stretched out in glorious tri-colour in the back room. This time the task was to get through the pile of old jeans and t-shirts that had grown to the right size for harvesting.

The two jeans rugs came out at c. 27″ x 45″ minus the fringes. I’d aimed for 50″ long, so this wasn’t far off. denim1 One used 3 pairs of adult male jeans in large, the other 3 1/2 pairs (different sizes). The weft was cut into 1″ strips (more or less), and the binding was approximately half the width, cut from a linen shirt. Actually I have to admit that one of the large pairs was XXL. I’d run out of jeans and saw that they were only $7 new in one outlet, so naturally went for the biggest size I could get. Probably cheaper than an op shop, too.

The t-shirt rug is currently 25″ x 58″. It was on the same warp as the jeans, so I guess the stretchiness of the materials played back on itself. I followed Ton Kinsely’s advice in Weaving rag rugs and cut the t-shirts – 16 of them up to the arms – across, then stretched out the loops joining them by, well, looping the loops. The binding was the same as the warp – linen warp yarn. The rug is quite sturdy and sits flat at the end of the bed.

tshirts All the rugs are actually straighter than they appear in the photos (honest!), and after Mr Knisely’s comment on the DVD (you don’t need both DVD and book as they are in total accord) about never getting perfect edges because they’re rag rugs, I felt better.

Here’s an interesting Swedish site (in English) on the history of rag rugs: Story of a rug.

Painted corn and purple basil

maïs coloré et basilic rouge, gemalter Mais und roter Basilikum, maiz pintado y albahaca roja, arbhar Indiach is basal dearg

Firstly, if anyone can correct any of the names above, I’d be more than interested.

Back to the dyes… I decided to try some purple basil (the annual variety) and also some red basil (a perennial variety), so picked a large handful – maybe two- of the flowering spikes.

The top row in the photo shows the results. The mordant (2, 4, 6 from left) clearly brought out deeper shades, whilst the alkaline modifier in addition to the mordant (4) gave me a bright green. The acid modifier (5 & 6) took away all the green and left me with beige.

corn&basil

I’d grown some painted corn this year, and one of the plants had a deep purple stem. The husk was also the same interesting shade, so this was worth a go in the dye pot. Both stem and husk spent a week or so drying, but am not sure this was entirely necessary, considering the deep burgundy colour of the liquor. corn

As often happens, the true shades haven’t come out quite true. Similarly to the basil, the modifier deepened the shades and the alkaline brought out the green. This time, however, the acid brought out the red. I’m eager to try these for both light- and wash-fastness (when I’ve finished with all the other samples in the ever-growing mound).

And the corn? The cobs that did develop to any size were not impressive (although the colours were interesting). Most had started to go mouldy inside, and some of the kernels which seemed not fully developed had even started to sprout. I’ll put this down to the weather this summer, as well as my lack of experience with this crop.