Indigo dyeing at the Plant Craft Cottage, the Royal Botanic Gardens

 It really worth trawling through the internet.  By doing that, I have found one of Melbourne's hidden treasures, the Plant Craft Cottage at the Royal Botanic Gardens. 

 I speedily enrolled in their Traditional Shibori-Organic Indigo workshop once I found it, and last weekend spent a fabulous Saturday learning how much I don't know with the wonderful women there.  Many of the Natural Dye Group have the knowledge of thirty or more years and I really hung on to every word, trying to absorb some of their skills by osmosis.

We started with a brief outline of a description of, and the history of, indigo, then set off to make up a stock solution and chemical dye vat.  First, we put 100 ml of warmish water in a glass jar with some marbles.

To this, we added 6 teaspoons of indigo powder, and we stirred it to make a thin paste.  Next, 400 ml water was added and the mixture shaken ( with the lid on).

 

 After this, an alkali base, in this case, 3 tablespoons of sodium hydroxide (caustic soda), was added to the liquid, one tablespoon at a time.  It is important to add strong substances to weak or caustic soda to fluid, because heat is produced.

After this, 6 teaspoons of stabilised sodium hydrosuphite (RIT) was sprinkled onto the surface  and stirred to ensure there were no lumps. 

The lid was then placed on the jar, which was shaken, then placed in warm (about 50 degrees C) water for 10 minutes to brew.  The solution took on a yellow brown hue.

  After this, we made up the indigo vats in plastic bins, by putting warm water in the bin.  The stock solution was gently added to give a good colour 

using a sieve to strain out the marbles.

 The vat was left to stew and was ready for use when a greenish yellowish colour appeared and it felt slimy.

As well as the chemical vats, we made up organic vats using Michel Garcia's methods. 

The fructose vat apparently yields a paleish dye and  is created using the above steps, but using 10 gm of powdered indigo, then a base of 20g hydrated lime (calcium carbonate)

and 30g of fructose.

The fruit vats were made by cooking 500 g of chopped well ripened pears

or pealed bananas (to extract the sugars) for a few minutes, then sieving the cooled mixture to extract the juice.  This juice was used to stir in  25g powdered indigo, and then 15g of hydrating lime.

 The darkest organic dye apparently comes from using 125g chopped dates, which are again cooked to extract the fruit sugar, cooled and sieved.  In this method, 125g indigo powder is added to the juice, then 45g sodium carbonate (which is washing soda) and 60g hydrated lime.

After we had made our stock solutions, we settled down to make some shibori samplers on pre-washed white cotton.  This one used a running stitch with diagonal lines to produce several different effects.

  

Once the stitching was done, the threads were pulled tight and knotted.

( I discovered later that my samplers were indistinct because I didn't pull tightly enough, so the indigo seeped into areas I wanted to remain white.)

Next, the  cotton bundles were soaked in water.

After that, each bundle was carefully squeezed, avoiding exposure to oxygen, and immersed in the dye vat where the bundle was squeezed and massaged under the surface for a few minutes, avoiding dripping or aerating the water.  We only had time for the one dip, but darker colours can be achieved.  When the bundle was removed and squeezed into a bowl, the colour of the fabric was green

but oxidisation quickly turned the fabrics blue.

After the fabrics dried, we undid the stitching and knots and, after washing, these are my results:

Tomorrow's class will develop my skills more, but I obviously need much more practice with knotting tightly.  Still, I learned a lot from my errors and had fun.  What more can you ask for?