Fiber & Dyeing Research

I have a mini obsession going right now, researching growing cotton & flax for my fiber class, and now I’ve branched into dye plants, wouldn’t it be great to bring in plants for the kids to use on their hand spun wool? I just need to figure out how it all works, and I’m always happiest when I’m learning things! And I’ve been learning some funny things reading Rita Buchanan’s A Weaver’s Garden which I found at the library.

Regarding the history of cotton (which as far as the Old World is concerned originated in India, but in the New World has apparently been independently cultivated from “Peru to Arizona” since prehistoric times along with New World spindles and looms predating European explorers):

Long ago, the amazing appearance of cotton was explained by the myth of the “Scythian lamb”. Medieval Europeans recited fantastic tales about the mysterious East. One story told of a tree or shrub that grew tiny lambs instead of flowers. Each lamb would bend ever on its stalk to browse on the nearby foliage, eat all the leaves within reach, and then wither away. The pure white fleeces of the lambs were “vegetable wool” or cotton bolls.

Isn’t that a fabulous image? I’m looking forward to growing miniature sheep in my garden this summer.

Flax: The flax species grown for seed and oil is the same, but it is harvested before the seeds set for fiber use. The awesome bit is the name, Linum usitatissimum, that’s Latin for “the most useful kind of flax.” (via The Herb Companion which has back yard flax growing and processing instructions.) [edit: I just realized this article is also written by Rita Buchanan which is wonderfully coincidental, but not surprising I guess.]

Indigo:
Indigo doesn’t chemically bond to fibers, it only adheres to them. It is a pigment, not a dye at all. Bluejeans are dyed (painted?) with indigo, and they become paler through rubbing off the indigo dye, not through fading via sunlight as many natural dyes do.

The chemistry of indigo is pretty cool too, you should read her book to find more out about it, but one thing I thought was neat: You get indoxl (C8H7NO) from soaking the leaves in water, which it isn’t soluble with, so it will precipitate out to the bottom. I think it is whitish or yellowish depending on the pH of the water. What it wants for its reaction into indigo is oxygen, so if you dip yarn into the water, and pull it out into the air (or churn the water) the indoxl coating the yarn will grab some oxygen, two indoxl molecules combine, loose 4 hydrogen, and produce indigo and water, and suddenly your yarn is blue. C8H7NO * 2 + O2 = C16H12N2O2 + H2O. (Disclaimer, I dropped out of AP Chem in high school and never looked back!) Rita’s description in A Weaver’s Garden (Google Books) is much more involved and I encourage you to read it if you are interested.

For the curious, here are the (less toxic) dye plants I’m now planning on (trying) growing (I’m also planning on harvesting nuts and tree woods locally):

  • Coreopsis / Cosmos (Yellow to Orange)
  • Dyer’s Broom (Yellow)
  • Madder (Red)
  • Weld (Yellow)
  • Indigo (Blue)
  • Woad (Blue)

Most of which it looks like I can get from HerbalHut (never tried them before). I got some Pima cotton seeds from Mielke’s Fiber Arts (Who I like) and I finally found some Linum usitatissimum at SeedCorner.com, we’ll see how that works out. I’ve listed these sources because I know you want to grow your own yarn too! Don’t you? I think growing cotton in the backyard is such an awesome educational project, whether you do anything other than play with the bolls or not.

Have you ever grown fiber or dye plants?

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I’ve never grown fiber or dyed plants, but your post has explained to me why using vinegar to set the color into the cute but mysteriously low-priced $10 maternity jeans didn’t work! At least, I’m guessing that the indigo pigment won’t set the way a dye would. I figured the jeans would have something wrong with them, and I’m guessing the reason for the price tag is that the dye rubs off onto ME – turning my legs blue!!!

Ha! Yes, I think you would need, um, glue. I’ve been trying to figure it out, but other than adjusting the pH, and thus the color of some natural dyes, I don’t understand what vinegar does and how it sets dyes. Some people seem to insist that vinegar isn’t a mordant (which apparently derives from the french ‘to bite’ and means that it assists the dye to bite into the fabric) and some people call it a mordant. I think all acids might be mordants, because of the way they abrade the fabric, and tannic acid certainly is a mordant. As is oxalic acid I think. I guess I think vinegar is a mordant, and the people who say it isn’t are just trying to confuse me!

There are naturally occurring colored cottons, too. We like to order some of our favorite heirloom vegetable seeds from Sand Hill Preservation Center http://www.sandhillpreservation.com/

Just read your entry last night (with Nenny) and now am seeing 5 cotton varieties for sale, 2 green, 2 tan/brown, 1 white — at the bottom of the page they have some cotton growing tips, not sure if “Northern” really applies to you as compared to Iowa where Sand Hill is – ?
http://www.sandhillpreservation.com/catalog/flowers.html#cotton

They take snail mail orders only as they are seed preservationists, not really seed business, but I love them! They are transitioning their whole farm to OG, so not all seeds offered are OG yet, but should be within a few years. Very high quality seed and great information.

You are so sweet. I do have some pima cotton seeds, but I’m all for interesting varieties. I know if I plant them in my yard they will all hybridize, so I’m not sure what that will do, but I suppose I will be lucky if I get to that stage! I’ve learned that I need to wait until the ground is reliably 60deg, so first up I think I need to find a soil thermometer.

I live on the gulf coast of Mississippi and have grown several shades of brown cotton, some green cotton and some of the commercial type of white cotton. They will mostly revert to the white if allowed to cross polinate but I will be glad to send you some bolls or segments that still contain the seed for your “kiddos”.

That’s so sweet of you. I did buy raw cotton (picked but still seedy) for the kids to use this year, as well as a couple whole bolls for them to examine, so we have what we need. The bolls are so expensive though, so I thought it would be fun to grow some so they could pick the cotton out of them rather than just looking at the bolls, and then they could see the actual plants, if I could bring them in somehow. As much of a daydream as anything else. But I’ll probably be teaching this class for the next 8 years, so I have time for some daydreams. 🙂 Do you think cotton would grow at all in a pot? I have read that it has a deep tap root, so perhaps it would be unhappy, growing, but not flowering.

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