With some mushroom varieties it is hard to find enough in one season so you are often storing them and continuing to add to your stash as you collect more. The rule of thumb for the ratio is weight of dye goods 1 : weight of fiber 1, meaning if your fiber weighs 500 grams then you need to have 500 grams of mushrooms. If you have too few mushrooms your fiber won’t turn a color and if you have a lot of mushrooms you can dye a lot of fiber. You have to collect enough mushrooms so that your fiber can be dyed. If you are using Iron or Copper you will see a visible change of color in the fiber and this can usually happen within 15 minutes (especially if it is heated) so pull out the fiber when you are happy with the color. An alternate option is a cold mordant, letting the fibers sit in the pot overnight for 24 hours. Put the pot on the stove and bring the temperature up to 140-160 degrees, stir your fibers occasionally and let simmer for 1 hour. Fill a pot with water, measure out the amount of mordant necessary given your weight of fiber, put it into warm water in a small bowl, stir until it is dissolved and then pour into the large pot. Iron will darken or sadden the colors and copper will push the colors to have more blue and green. Iron: Use 2% of weight of fiber for protein/animal or cellulose/plant fibers.Ĭopper: Use 2% of weight of fiber for protein/animal or cellulose/plant fibers.Īlum mordant will make for the brightest, clearest colors possible this mordant doesn’t shift the color of your fiber. Add 2% cream of tartar if dyeing skeins to keep them softer.Īluminum Acetate: Use 10% of weight of fiber for cellulose/plant fibers. There are three standard mordants used in natural dyeing.Īluminum Potassium Sulfate: Use 8% of weight of fiber for protein/animal fibers. It is important that you mordant your fiber before dyeing this will enable the color from the mushroom dye binds with the material. Your water should appear dirty and brown ensuring you have properly cleaned your fibers. Put some mild soap (Ivory Flakes) or pH neutral detergent (Dawn) in a pot with water, drop in your fabric, bring to a low boil and simmer for an hour. If you happen to be using fabric that was not prepared for dyeing (PFD) you will need to scour the fabric first to remove all the surfactants to ensure the mordant and dye can bind to the fibers. Selecting your type of fiber is very important and before you do anything you want to weigh your fiber and write down the weight for future reference. You can use cellulose/plant based fibers such as cotton, linen or hemp but the colors are often more muted and lighter. You can put skeins of yarn or fabric in the mushroom dye bath but mushrooms, like most other natural dyes, tend to create brighter, more saturated colors on protein/animal based fibers such as wool and silk. You will also need a stir stick, rubber gloves, measuring cup, buckets or bowls, a scale, pH strips and a strainer or cheesecloth. A thermometer is very important to make sure you do not over heat your mushrooms. You need to procure some basic stainless steel pots, large enough for your fibers to move around freely in the pot. Be sure to cook up your mushroom dye baths in a well ventilated area, they can sometimes smell a little funky! Once you use these items to make a mushroom dye bath you definitely don’t want to cook your food in them, always keep them separate from your home kitchen cooking tools. In order to get started using mushrooms as dyes for fibers there are a few basic supplies you need to procure. It is easy for beginners to identify and creates a beautiful range of color from yellow to green to orange to brown depending on its stage in life. For the purposes of this article I have selected Phaeolus schweinitzii, commonly known as Dyer’s Polypore, which is an easy beginner dye mushroom.
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