Morocco - day three

by - Saturday, August 01, 2009

The third day. Once again the previous days dyeing is thoroughly washed out in the morning and hung to dry. With colours now coming from combinations of dyes it is very important to label the hanks. The key to consistent colour is often careful note-taking. We record the concentration of dye (expressed as a percentage of weight-of-fiber or "WOF") and the dye sequence, for example, pomegranate over cochineal.


Today is the day we have all been waiting for, because today we learn to use indigo. Really, indigo is so much fun that one must be careful where one puts it when planning a workshop - the enthusiasm is high and everything ends up being immersed in the dyepot - it is just so tempting to turn things blue.

We have a wonderful set of light cotton scarves to work with before we turn to the serious work of dyeing hanks of wool. Right away it is evident that students understand the concept of tied resist and they begin to experiment. The volunteers are having just as much fun as the students and one or two shirts go into the dye pot.

With almost the entire group sporting new indigo head scarves we return to the wool and complete our colours by adding indigo blue. Greens are obtained by overdying some of the yellows that we made the previous day.


















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