July 2, 2013
Quebracho Red
We have been having quite a time here. First, our sewer backed up and left an inch and a half of water in the basement. I cleaned and bleached everything and washed all the bedding and clothes. Three days worth of laundry. My dryer quit on the first day so I went out and bought clothesline and clothes pins and created a solar clothes dehydrator...
This baby has two hundred feet of line and four hundred pins... add sun, a little breeze, and it is the best solar invention ever!
So. I finished cleaning everything in the basement. Then two weeks after the first flood, we get nine plus inches of rain in a couple of hours. Now there is two feet of water in the basement. (at least it wasn't sewage this time). Back to scrubbing the basement again, rewashing the clothes, removing all the appliances and furniture. The walls come out next. Bottom line... Why am I telling you this? To explain my lack of writing. Also, I haven't been scouting the wild color lately.
Yesterday, I decided that it was time to try something new in the dye pot. I went to my stash. A couple years ago I took a class on natural dying, after which I bought a lot of natural dye stuff. Until now, I haven't used any of it. I got all the stuff together and started looking through it. I decided to try the Quebracho red dye powder.
Quebrachea lorentzii is a tree that grows in Paraguay. The wood is extremely hard and the bark
contains a great deal of tannin. The red dye powder is made from the bark and heartwood. A large
range of colors is possible depending on the mordant, assist, after mordant, and the type of material
being dyed. I used wool roving and an alum mordant for the first run and added cream of tartar to the mordant for the second.
I dyed three and a half ounces of wool in each run. I mordanted it in alum while making the dye bath. I put one ounce of quebracho powder in a jar and added hot tap water and stirred to make a paste. I added this to the dye pot with enough water to allow the roving to move freely. I brought the dye bath to a simmer and held it for one hour, then cooled it for a couple hours. Letting it sit for a while helps the color develop. I then added the mordanted wool and brought the pot slowly to a simmer for another hour. I left the wool to steep in the bath while it cooled over night. I then rinsed the wool until the water ran clear and washed it with Eucalan.
I wanted to do a second run as there was still a lot of color in the pot. I had another three and a half
ounces of wool mordanted in alum. I decided to add some cream of tartar to that. I mixed it in water in a small jar and added it to the mordant bath. I brought the pot to a simmer for about an hour and cooled it back to a temperature I could handle. I raised the dye pot temperature to match and added the remaining roving. I simmered this for an hour and let it steep and cool for three. It came out very similar to the first batch, maybe a little more on the 'pink' side, but close enough so I plan to spin them together.
The color I got was a beautiful salmon color. I plan to spin it into a lace weight yarn.
