Ive bitten the bullet, now need help with dying

[WhiteSheep]

Hi everyone,

Im looking for some guidence in the way of dying cotton and other man-made/plant fibers. Ive just bought myself just now a drop spindle and some cotton roving, of which i would like to dye before i start to spin it.

What would be the best natural vegan dyes to use, to dye the roving before i spin it?

Also would i have to use different dye's for every different roving as depending on how i go with this first lot, i might go ahead and get some soy/hemp/flax/linen ect ect roving

Hope someone can help

Thanks

Nessy

[ptarmic wumpus]

IMHO, your easiest and best results would be with fiber-reactive commercial dyes such as Procion. However, you might want to contact the manufacturer directly (some place like Jacquard, Pro-Chem, or maybe Dharma Trading) to ask about how the dyes are made - historically, some natural dyes were made from animal products such as crushed insects.  I'm not sure if the new dyes retain any of these historical components or if they are all synthetic.   These dyes will get very light and wash fast, and have a wide color range, and will work on all cellulose fibers.

Soy silk is a little different, more like a protein fiber (think wool, hair, etc). It can be dyed with acid dyes  the commercial dyes give very nice results, the dye bath often exhausts very well (all dye is bonded to the fiber, leaving a bath with few chemicals left in it), and you just need vinegar as the acid to set the dye.  Kool-aid and food icing dyes are in this category - again, you would need to check with the manufacturer to find out about the components.

If you want to go the natural dye route, be aware that cellulose fibers are harder to dye this way than protein fibers, and the results are often not very wash or light-fast. Also, toxic mordants are sometimes used to bind the dye to the fiber - you can use less toxic mordants, or go the unmordanted route, but will have fewer color choices and some dyes will not work as well. I recommend going to the library and reading about this in detail if you want to try it - there are many books on the subject. 

I've dyed with all of these methods (using the less toxic alum for natural dyes) and personally prefer the results that I get with commercial dyes. If you are worried about environmental impacts, the natural dyes are not always the winner in comparison with commercial dyes. You can get some nice results with natural dyes, especially if you are looking for more muted colors, and don't intend to wash the final product frequently.  Historically (I'm talking medieval northern europe here), wool garments were dyed, but linen garments were usually just left natural or bleached in the sun, since the old world dye/mordants just didn't work well on plant fibers.