Shortly about dyeing and weaving

Actually, there isn’t so much to say about dyeing project. I mordanted both spinning wheel- and spindle-spun yarn in alum bath and dyed  warp yarns in the first bath and then weft yarns in the afterbath. This was a small loss – I should have thought before dyeing that of course more loose-spun weft will absorb more colour, which meant that the difference between colours of the warp and the weft is very slight.

Because I didn’t had an iron pot for dyeing I used iron vithrill, which I had about 1,1g/100g yarn. I was afraid that the colour would become too dark and was quite cautious with the amount of iron – too cautious, I can now say. The colour is much lighter than I planned. I’m still considering about dyeing the whole cloth after weaving in an another iron bath, but it could be a bit risky.

I have set up the warp (the sett is about 6-7 threads/cm) and should begin to do the tie-up. I tried to begin it a while ago, but I had to admit that without teacher’s intructions I’m probably doing it wrong from the beginning, so it’s better to wait that someone straightens out couple of things to me.

Finished dyeing

Done. You can find more pictures from here. I try to write something more about the whole process a bit later. The colour is much lighter than I really wanted, but quite nice anyway.

We visited today Överhogdal, which is a village here in Härjedalen. Almost 100 years ago they found pieces of a tapestry from the village church. The tapestry was later dated to the Viking Age and is one of the very few very old tapestry finds in Europe which have never been under the soil. The original tapestry is now in Jämtlands county museum, but our teacher, Ellinor Sydberg, made an exact copy of it on ’80’s working with spinning, dyeing and weaving linen and wool. The whole work took several years.

I took also a bunch of photos about the tapestry reconstruction and a “museum” made around it. It was a very fine place; if you ever visit Härjedalen, I can recommend it warmly.

Dyeing, part 2

Some pics about dyeing are now here in Flickr. I got a very beautiful olive green colour from the heather, which was cooked in an iron cauldron (about 3,5 hours cooking, yarn was in the heather bath only one hour).

I counted my yarn yesterday and figured out that I got more than I actually should need. Because of that I begun to dye those yarns on this morning. I have done mordanting, now the heather is cooking and I’m trying to relax a bit before beginning to dye the loom.

Because the school doesn’t have a big iron cauldron, I have to use iron vithrill for getting the green iron colour out from the heather. This is actually probably almost authentic – in the literature it’s often mentioned they have used file dust or small pieces of iron in baths made for dyeing yarn or colouring leather.

I’m dyeing the loom in the first heather bath and the weft in the afterbath. The big cauldron is made of stainless steel. I’ll dye both dyes and then add iron vithrill and put both the weft and the loom together to the iron bath. I hope the colour will be a nice one.

Now I’ll begin with my hand-spun yarns…

Experimental dyeing

We planned the dyeing a bit with my teacher Ellinor. I want to make an experiment with  only a small amount of yarn because of the uncertainty of the end result.

So, this is my plan:

120g yarn = 100g “industrial” white woollen yarn (3 fibres) and 20g tightly hand-spunned (spinning wheel) yarn (2 fibres)

This amount is divided to two small skeins (2 x 50g + 10g).

Other skein is washed with water and a small amount of ammonia and the other with mixture of water and urine. The purpose is to wash away the lanolin fat before mordanting with alum. The point in using urine is to experiment again: it has been a very popular way to wash yarn, but the amounts which were used are a bit uncertain. Another thing is that I didn’t remember to begin to pee in a bucket before this morning, so the urine I’ll use is quite fresh, which means I probably need more than it has been traditional (which is a bit nicer for me, because some weeks or months old urine just smells like hell…) We’ll see if it works or not.

These skeins are divided once again to two different cauldrons. The other one is made of stainless steel, the other one of casted iron.

So, both cauldrons will have 120 grams of heather and:
- 25g ammonia-washed industial yarn
- 25g urine-washed industrial yarn
- 5g ammonia-washed hand-spunned yarn
- 5g urine-washed hand-spunned yarn

I’ll cook heather 4 hours before the dyeing. An old dyeing book (Hulda Kontturi: Luonnonväreillä värjäämisestä, http://coloriasto.blogspot.com/2007/12/hulda-kontturi-luonnonvreill-vrjmisest.html) tells that an iron cauldron will give olive green colour to the yarn dyed by heather. I’ll check if this is true. If I’ll get a nice green colour, I’ll experiment with stainless cauldron and a very small amount of iron vithrill (no idea about the correct name in English). It’s possible that in prehistory they have been dyeing in clay pots, but a bit more probable is that they have been using iron cauldrons (thought not casted iron, but I don’t have any other options now), which loose a bit of iron to the water. But we’ll see what happens, this is very exciting!

(Writing in English becomes more and more difficult. All terms are in Swedish n my head, and sometimes it’s difficult to find words even in Finnish. Sorry about terrible grammar in my later posts, but if I begin to think what I’m writing, I will not write anything…)