Dyers Madder (Rubia tinctoria) Dye Recipe

Madder Root Dye Recipe
for 100 grams of fibre
20 grams Indian Madder Root powder – Rubia Cordifolia
Put Madder Root dye powder into dye pot.
Let simmer in dyepot for +1 hour at 50 deg.
Add pre-mordanted wool yarn and sample fabrics.
Let simmer in dyepot for +1 hour.
Remove the wool yarn. Let this cool and rinse thoroughly to remove the excess dye powder.
For stronger colours, turn the heat off the dyepot and leave the yarns to soak overnight. More colour will continue to develop as the dyebath cools.

Mordants for Natural Plant Dyes

The Dye recipe and ratio fo dye to weight of fibre is the same for both animal and vegetable fibres. But the mordants used differ due to the properties of animal and vegetable fibres and how the dye is absorbed into the fibre.

Mordant for Wool Yarns Alum For dyeing wool, silk, alpaca or other yarns from animals use clean and scoured yarn or fleece. Use 10% weight of Alum (Potassium Aluminum Sulphate) to weight of fibre. If you are dyeing 100 grams of fibre, use 10 grams of Alum. Alum is a naturally occuring mineral that is found in the ground.

Mordants for Cellulose Fibres

All cellulose fibres, yarns and fabrics must be scoured prior to mordanting or dyeing. Please see my previous article on how to do this.
How to Scour Linen

I will add another article on different ways to mordant Cotton / Linen and other cellulose fibres.

50 Shades of Colour From Plants

In this video – I didn’t realize that I was speaking too quickly.. I have added Closed Captions.

I will be doing a series of short how to dye videos on YouTube, covering my method of plant dyes. I work in a very small dye space, but I love to create lots of shades of colour. I don’t put all of the yarn into large dye vats but I use small crock pots. Why? It saves a lot of water, and heat and you can achieve a marvelous range of colour. I don’t discard the dye vat when I have finished dyeing the yarn or piece of fabric. If there is still dye left in the vat – I keep using the vat until the water looks quite clear and no more dye is adhering to the fibre.