week04.md

4. Biochromes*

* ...and a love affair with cabbage

Results

Dyes
The students in the Amsterdam lab collaborated to make a shared repository of dyed fibres (yarns and swatches). We individually made an overview of dying with a particular material: I worked with CABBAGE and we all died several cottons, hemp, sugar cane, algae, silk, mohair, linen, felt, and cheesecloth.

A love affair with lady Cabbage, Loes Bogers 2019

Inks
We made a range of inks based on the dye recipes (some modified, others not) and experimented with it on paper, using several modifiers.

Bio-based inks, Loes Bogers 2019

Dying with bacteria
And lastly, dyed a piece of silk using Serratia Marcensis grown and nurtured by Cecilia and her collaborators at the Biolab. We cooked the growing medium together, sterilized together and each dyed our own piece of silk:

Silk died with Serratia Marcensis, Loes Bogers 2019

Dye, ink, pigment: a basic lexicon

What's what?
Here's what I picked up from Cecilia's lectureand slides, and her lab tutorial.

• Dye is basically a liquid bath, its soluble in water, and goes into the fiber (which you pen up first by scouring them if you're dying plant fibres).
• Ink is a more dense liquid, also soluble in water, also goes into the material.
• Pigment is a powder, it's not soluble (in water) and goes onto the material

The play and the actors

• Vehicle/solvent: the thing that gets the color out of your dye stuff! If only you could squeeze color out of everything you see, but no. If you want to dye textile, you're probably better off soaking your dye material in something it can release its color into. For example in water or ethanol (high percentage alcohol) - which we used for dyeing - or oil or gel.

• Binder: in some cases, the color might need a bit of extra help to merge with the vehicle and prevent it from separating. A binder helps, such as arabic gum. For dying, more often referred to as mordant.

• Additive: with salt, vinegar or minerals you can do extra bonus stuff! Like stabilize or even out the distribution of dye in the water and fibres (salt), intensify the color (mordants like alum, copper, iron), preserving, thickening, or modifying the color (magic!). You can modify for example PH sensitive dyes by adding more acidic modifiers (citric acid, vinegar), or more alkaline liquids (like soda ash dissolved in water, and sometimes tap water itself cam be alkaline, as I discovered.

• Mordants (or dye fixatives): are used as a bridge between the color you extract from the dye matter and the fibre. It's like the glue you need to keep them together. You can use iron liqueur, copper liqueur, alum powder (dissolved in hot water). Mordants can effect the shade of the dye too (soda for example is alkali). So keep this in mind. Mordants can be used before dying (pre-mordanting), it can be added to the dye bath itself (meta-mordanting, like Bela did with her Lichens), of after the bath (post-mordanting)x§

• Recipes: will give you starting points for ratios between all of the above, and the do's and don'ts. Start with a recipe, deviate widely and systematically! <3

• Unbleached fibres: are so hard to get! It's a pity because bleach is bad...

• Animal fibres: get your protein! Like silk, wool, mohair, camel, alpaca, angora. These don't need to be scoured before dying, they tend to dye well in bright, deep colors. The protein binds well with mordant - which then bonds with the dye - and responds to acid and alkaline modifiers. Do not boil animal fibres! Keep them simmering at 80 degrees celcius. Do not shock them in cold water when rinsing.

• Vegetable fibres: get your cellulose! Cotton, jute, hemp, algae, linen, sugar cane etc. These need to be scoured to open up the fibres before dyeing. You can boil and shock these, they won't be bothered. Not all veg fibre is sustainable! e.g. viscose is a plant, but the processes used to create it are highly chemical.

• Scouring: is done with scouring agents such as sodium ash (sodium carbonate/natrium carbonate). These are used to prepare vegetable fibres for dying, basically to clean them by removing all the waxes, pectins to makes the textile material hydrophilic or water absorbent.

• Stabilizers: like salt, helps color distribute evenly in the water, and in the fibres you dye in it.

• Modifiers: substances that change the hue of the dye. PH modifiers change color by changing the PH toward more acidic (vinegar, citric acid, alum), or more alkaline (sodium carbonate). Metal modifiers can also alter color: copper makes the hues more blue/green, whereas iron makes them duller/darker in tone.

##Dying process in steps

0. Make skeins

Prepare the yarn by twisting it 4 times around forearm and close it with a knot you will be able to undo. We did about 20 for each fibre. The yarn won't tangle as easily.

Twisting and turning using the technique of Cecilia's nonna, Loes Bogers, 2019

1. Scour your vegetable fibres

Soak them in hot water with 2 tablespoons of sodium carbonate for at least an hour to clean and open up the fibres.

2. Weigh the dry fibre

Do it, weigh it. Combine fibres cleverly: animal with animal, vegetable with vegetable. Animal fibre should never boil! So keep them separate and safe. Add up the numbers and calculate how much scouring agent and/or mordant you need.

3. Scouring (the vegetable fibre)

Add up the weight of each vegetable fibre that goes into one pot, and calculate the amount of scourin needed.

Our cottons, sugar cane, algae, hemp and linen went into another pot. We wrapped it all up in a cheescloth that we could then also dye.

The total was 520 grams of dry fibre to which we added 4 tablespoons of soda ash (sodium carbonate) for scouring (first dissolve in hot water, then add to pot). Cover the fibre with hot water and boil for at least an hour. The fabrics Cecilia brought (organic stretch jersey and cotton twill) were already pre-scoured with soda ash in a washing machine, so we only mordanted them.

4. Mordanting (all fibres)

Vegetable fibres After an hour or scouring, we rinsed the vegetable fibres, filled the pot again and added the mordant. We added 10-15% of alum (60 grams dissolved in hot water) and let it boil for another hour.

Animal fibres Our silks, mohair, felt and wool went into one pot. A total of 92 grams of fibre. We added 10-20% of the dry weight in alum (21 gr), that we first dissolved in hot water, and then added to the pot. 5 grams of cream of tartar was added to keep the wool shiny and soft (8%). Fill up the pot until the fibres are covered with hot water of 70-80% celcius.

Be sure to dissolve the mordant before adding it to the pot. Only THEN you add the fibres to the pot.

Simmer for at least an hour at 70-80 degrees Celcius. Keep an eye on the temperature with a thermometer.

Then take the fibres out and rinse in WARM water. Animal fibres don't like to be shocked with cold water!

5. Dyeing: each on their own now!

We separated the fibres so everyone had 2-3 skeins of each fabric. We all picked a dye material that we died all our fibres in and then modified in different ways. We worked with:

• Avocado pits & Madder Bea
• Lichens Bela
• Red cabbage (I did this one!)
• Alkanet (Sara)
• Turmeric Paulina
• Hibiscus Carolina

6. Documenting and archiving

The basics of documenting color, things to mention and things to consider.

Dye stuff

• Name
• Origin
• Date

Recipe

• Quantities
• Time
• Vehicle
• Binder
• Stabilizer
• Modifier
• Thickener

Catologueing

• By color (the designer's brain)
• By dying material (the dyer's brain)
• Think of a logic
• A visual system
• Expressive, or systematic, or both
• Research different analytical models, besides mapping

##My love affair with cabbage

###1 hour dye

###To rinse or not to rinse...

###Modifying with vinegar (acidic PH modifier)

###Overnight dye

###Modifying with soda ash (alkaline PH modifier)

###Modifying with vinegar again!

###Post-mordanting

nope. Acid!

###Cataloging

##Inks

###Step one

###Step two

Experiments

##Bacterial dye

###Biolab basics

###Growing media, or: what to feed Serratia

###Sterilizing the food and the substrate

###Plating

###Inoculating

###Keeping our bacteria alive

Letting our bacteria dye and die

ADD THESE THROUGHOUT!

Lecture notes

What are biochromes? Colors present in natural sources

###Context

Color is everywhere, sources of color are present in every environment. But we forgot how to use and extract pigments. this class is about understanding the materials and behaviors of the things around us, and the locality of it. The local water will have particular results, but that's the beauty of it. You will learn how to control the PH a little bit. Color is alive, it's full of symbolism but culturally dependent. We've used it since we lived in caves! 13-14 thousand years.

Newton's treatise on optics. Separating the color spectrum with a prism and analyses how color functions. Before this we mapped out colors as dots, with recipes. But newton created theory of color, analytical model, using the color wheel etc. Mapping colors is a whole challenge in itself. Different methods have been developed to catalogue color.

What is color?
Wavelengths & frequency and how the human eye perceives it.

####Sources of color

Organic: (contains carbon):

• Plant
• Animal
• Organism

Inorganic (no carbon):

• Minerals

Inks

Soluble, dense, into material. Three components:

• vehicle - what you use to suspend the pigment
• binder - e.g. arabic gum, acts like a glue between textile and ink
• additive - eg. salt, vinegar for stabilising, intensifying, modifying, preserving, thickening

Process:

1. combine dye
2. boil/stir
3. ???

You can use soot from a candle to make dark ink!

Logic per color

PH sensitive pigments

Documenting

1. Dye stuff:name (latin!), origin, date

2. Recipe: quantities, time, vehicle, binder, stabilizer, modifier, thickener

3. Catalogue: by material, by colour

You can map colors schematically, but there's also value in expressive examples of ink, like drawings, blotches etc. This is a great reference: Make Ink by Jason Logan Tips for documenting:

• Find the Latin and English name
• Mention (the form of the) raw material (e.g. chips or powder)
• Make series that allow you to compare

Dyes

Types of dyes: acid, basic, direct, mordant, vat dyes, reactive dyes, disperse dyes, azoic dyes (toxic), sulfur dyes, food dyes.

Mauve was the first synthetic pigment, discovered by accident. If you don't question the consequences you might poison people, like used to happen with arsenic dyes that was used to dye fabrics green. The fact that it's natural does NOT make it safe.

Dyes are not mentioned in tags inside clothing. Nobody is talking about it. Color is so important, what color are you wearing? How polluting is it? We often don't know. Water pollution is a serious consequence in the fashion industry, because it gets loaded with chemicals.

Bleaching is one of the most damaging processes for the environment.

Fibres & Pigments

Animal fibres:
wool, silk, angora, mohair, alpaca, camel. They host color really well.

Natural fibres:
Cotton, linen, ramie, hemp, sisal, jute, viscose. These often need to be combined with tannins or other, to open up the fibres so the mordent can bond better.

Proces:
Different for animal and vegetable fibres:

1. Prepare the fibre, to open up the fibres (animal fibres)

Mordants
Less toxic: alum (a mineral, brightens up the color), iron, copper (is great for blues and greens). They brighten the color. Alum is the best for people with allergies and also works very well.

With copper: wear gloves! Use copper pipes: hammer them first to break potential coating that is on it.

Iron: use rusty nails to make iron liquor. Iron is a mordant but also a color modifier. It saddens the color, makes it darker, more grayish. Adds a bit of yellowish tone.

Modifiers

• Acidic: brighten up colors
• Alkaline: move more towards colder colors
• Copper: will give /blueish hue
• Iron: yellowish hue

###Natural Dyes

• Avocado
• Cabbage
• Onions
• And more

How do you know how concentrated your iron/copper liquors are? You can't, you need to compare it with a synthetic one.

###Bacterial Dyes

Bacteria are single-celled organisms and they're EVERYWHERE. There are different levels of biosafety. You cannot do everything in a home-brew lab, you'd need a different licence. So compounds are strikingly similar to the pigments found in plants.

Why bacteria? They make patterns! They're collaborators in creating visual patterns. There have been research papers etc published on this since the 80s, but the fashion industry never really voiced the fact that this has been an issue the industry was facing, so it's not been addressed and explored.

Reference: the Bioshades Website you can download workbooks, and even facilitator's workbooks. text

They teach workshops worldwide with patented processes, to campaign for bacterial dyes and have debate about this with biologists, bio-scientists and people from the fashion industry.

##Inspiration (given by Cecilia)

• Natsay Audrey - Fabric Futures
• Victoria Geaney - with biotech lab
• Pili
• Karin Fleck - Textile lab Vienna > how can we upscale this to industrical level?

Color is life; for a world without color appears to us as dead – Johannes Itten

##Safety Don't use any utensils you use for dyeing also for eating or cooking after! You can chop stuff but once you are working with mordants etc etc you are definitely not going to put them in touch with your food tools.

##Further research (there's so much!)

• Algae dyes (for screen printing!)
• Dyes from recycled garments
• Soy mordants
• Earth pigments

Bonus section & recitation

Bonus is a bonus