Dyeing Fabric with Culinary Herbs

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2. Mordanting with alum
Mordanting encourages wool fiber to take up more color from the dye bath. You can use different substances as mordants, but I used the common mordant, alum (alumininum sulfate), available in any grocer’s spice department.

First, weigh your fiber. Then divide fiber into two equal groups. (Remember to keep a sample of each fabric or yarn for comparison after you finish dyeing.) You will mordant one half of the fiber, so weigh the fiber that will be mordanted. Dyers refer to this as the weight of goods or wog. The wog will be used to calculate the quantity of mordant. Use an amount of alum that equals 10 percent of the wog of the fiber to be mordanted. For example: The wog for the fiber I mordanted was 2.2 ounces; 10 percent of 2.2 = 0.2 ounces of alum needed to mordant this amount of fabric.

Place alum and a pinch of powder detergent into a stainless-steel pan. Add enough distilled water (I used 1.5 gallons) to cover the fiber. Stir to dissolve the powders. Wet your fiber in room temperature distilled water before adding it to the pan. Heat over a medium burner to 140 degrees, cover with a lid, and simmer for 30 minutes. Turn off the burner, and allow water and fiber to reach room temperature. Depending on the amount of fiber, cooling takes at least 1 hour. You can speed the cooling process if you remove the lid, stir and gently lift the fiber every few minutes. After the water has cooled, remove the fiber and place it on paper toweling on a flat surface or a drying rack. You can either let the fiber dry or proceed to the dye bath while the fiber is wet.

This is a good time to mark each of the alum-mordanted pieces of fiber. I cut a small notch from the corner of each piece of fabric or tie a knot in the end of skeins of yarn to mark them as mordanted fabric and yarn.

3. Preparing the Dye Bath
First, use garden pruning shears to cut rosemary sprigs into quarter-inch pieces. I purchased three 0.75-ounce packages of rosemary for my small dye project. Add distilled water to cover the rosemary pieces. Heat over a medium burner to 140 degrees, cover, and simmer for 40 minutes. Check the temperature every 10 minutes or so and adjust heat as necessary. The rosemary sprigs will impart a pale, transparent, yellow-green hue to the water. Turn off the burner and allow the dye bath to reach room temperature. This will take at least 45 minutes. Again, you can speed the cooling process if you remove the lid and stir the dye bath. Pour the dye bath through a stainless-steel or plastic strainer into a glass, stainless-steel or plastic container. If not using the dye bath immediately, cover and refrigerate the container. Discard or compost the rosemary sprigs.

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