I was able to spend some more time this past week in the print room and experiment with modifying colours. This has been something I have done in my home kitchen studio but the print room has allowed for further and more reliable experimentation with dyestuff.

The print room has fantastic facilities and I was able to create multiple dye baths at the same time and create a series of experiments using different modifiers.
The dye material I used for the dye baths were:
Pomegranate skins (lime yellow/ green)
Red cabbage (purple)
Red onion skins (green)
Yellow onion skins (yellow/ golden brown)
Cochineal (pink)
The different modifying agents used were:
Iron (makes deeper colour)
Copper (deeper or duller colour)
Citric acid (bright/ enhance colour)

I used cotton to test all the colours and heated the natural dyestuff. Using smaller pots I added the modifying agents to change colours and kept note of them in a chart I had made. It was interesting to see the range of hues and it was really helpful to be able to create a wide range. Creating the small samples is a great way to communicate visually the power of natural dyes and the variety you can achieve.
Moving forward I want to test out more colours and use the facilities to easier measure and document the experiments. I used research from two different natural dye books and some pure experimentation of guessing and seeing the results. It did feel like doing science experiments and measuring out measurements and keeping notes mixes together science and textiles for interdisciplinary practise.

Books used for reference:
Booth, A. (2019). The Wild Dyer: A Maker's Guide to Natural Dyes with Projects to Create and
Stitch. Princeton Architectural Press.
Dean, J. (2018). Wild Colour: How to Make and Use Natural Dyes (1st ed.). Mitchell Beazley.
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