Dyeing with Natural Colorants: Teaching Resources, Activity Sheets, and Dye Samples

Resources for dyeing textiles with natural colorants (including cochineal, madder, weld, and redwoods) following historical dye recipes. Recipes and procedure adapted from Jo Kirby et al, Natural Colorants for Dyeing and Lake Pigments: Practical Recipes and their Historical Sources (London: Archetype, 2014)

• Presentation: Cochineal Dye: History, Chemistry, and Preparation - an overview of historical natural colorants and dyes, details about common red colorants, a deep-dive into the history of cochineal insects as a dye and pigment source, the preparation of mordant dyes, and explanation of the chemistry of these natural colorants
• Presentation: Dyeing: Step-by-Step Instructions with information about sourcing materials
• Handout: One-page Instruction Sheet for Mordant and Dye Process - procedure and instructions that can be adapted for any number of mordants and dye sources
• Activity Sheet: Mordant Dyeing with Cochineal - instructions for mordanting textiles with alum and dyeing with cochineal (and/or cochineal with potash as an additive)
• Activity Sheet: Calculating ratios and amounts of dyestuffs, mordants, and textiles for dyeing - created as part of a reconstruction exchange workshop with Refashioning the Renaissance in March 2019 on dyes (presentation above). Application of parts of the template provided below
• Template and recipes: natural dyes - a spreadsheet pre-populated with recipes for natural colorants, information about sourcing materials, as well as templates and examples for calculating ingredient amounts based on the amount of textile to be dyed
• Pictures: dye sample book (Naomi Rosenkranz) - an incomplete sample of various dye experiments from the Making and Knowing Lab (and home kitchens!) with different combinations of textiles, natural colorants, mordants, and additives.