Osborn Fiber Studio

I promised some black bean dyeing quite a while ago, and do not think I have forgotten! But before you do any dyeing, you have to mordant – and the mordant used for black beans is common enough that it really merits a post of its own (unlike vinegar mordanting, which to my knowledge is pretty much useful only when dyeing with berries). But the black bean dyeing is down there, so keep scrolling if that’s why you’re here. So without further ado, I give you:

Step 1: Mordanting with Aluminum Sulfate!!! (with sidekick Cream of Tartar)

You will need: Aluminum Sulfate, Cream of Tartar, a large pot that you will NOT use again for cooking, rubber gloves, water, your stove, your wool.

Mordant is important to the natural dyer. The natural dyer is stealing colors from nature – colors made from naturally found chemicals that, for the most part, serve other purposes in their natural state than changing the hue of fabric or fiber. The purpose of mordant is to make those natural chemicals bind permanently to their new homes, generally by changing the PH.

Several chemicals can do this, but the most popular are Aluminum Sulfate, Copper, Tin, and Chrome. Since they each do different things to PH, using them results in getting different colors from your natural dyes. Also, some are more appropriate to some dyes than others. However, they are all fairly serious chemicals. I like Aluminum Sulfate (commonly referred to as alum by dyers and the like) because it is the least harsh as a chemical and it is reasonably priced in bulk.

Tip: You can get alum from dye suppliers, but the cheapest way to get it is from your local nursery, if they have it. (Gardiners use it to change the PH of soil to make some flowers bluer.) The 4 lb. bag above I got from Grandfather’s Garden Center in Columbia, MD cost me 9 bucks and has mordanted 16 lbs of wool. (That’s a lot.)

The first thing to do is to weigh your wool, then measure out the appropriate amount of alum.

The magic amount of alum to use is 1/4 weight of fiber. That means 1 oz. of alum for 4 oz. fiber, 4 oz. alum for 1 lb. fiber, etc. Sources vary on the amount of Cream of Tartar to use, but I generally go with about 1 Tbsp per 4 oz. fiber.

(This stuff is not record-setting dangerous, but it is smart to use rubber or latex gloves. Also, when you pour it out it can create a big chemical cloud that makes me nervous, so do it outside, with a mask, or at least at a distance.)

Once the chemical is measured out, the next thing to do is dissolve it. Add a decent amount of very hot water and stir until it’s dissolved, then add cold or lukewarm water to fill the pot to the point that will probably cover your yarn or fiber.

Then just add wool (or yarn or alpaca or whatever) and heat! Your goal is for the solution to simmer for about 1 hour. Exercise caution: I will say it again – these are real grown-up chemicals. COVER this while it’s simmering, and when open it to check on it, do not stick your face in the fumes. This is not wassail, people. After an hour, turn off the heat and let it cool overnight.

The mordanted fiber can be used right away the next day, or you can squeeze it out and lay it flat to dry. (Use gloves while it’s wet – see above bit about chemicals.) Once it’s completely dry you can put it away until you’re ready to do some dyeing.

Step 2: Prep the Beans

You will need: Dry black beans (4x weight of fiber to be dyed), cold water, lots of bowls, long wooden or plastic spoon.

If you have ever used dried black beans, you know you have to soak them overnight – and you may have been surprised or horrified to find their soaking liquid black and disgusting the next day, and your bowl turned blue. Guess what: that liquid is a dye! Black beans are delicious, and they are delightfully cheap. And one of the semi-convenient things about this dyeing method is that it partially prepares an enormous batch of chili.

Tip: If you happen to live near one of those cool organic grocers where you can get dry goods in bulk, organic black beans actually work even better for this. Not like it should be surprising – fewer chemicals on the surface of those dye-yielding black skins.

The key is to use a LOT of water. You want to be able to completely fill your dyepot later with just the water you’ve soaked from your beans. This means a lot of bowls. They will turn a little blue and yucky inside from this process, but it’s nothing a few runs through the dishwasher won’t fix. And it’s just beans and water at this point, so you can use containers you still want to use for food later (unlike your dyepot, which handles mordants).

When you first put the beans in to soak, they will look unassuming, as in the picture above. But after a few hours, give them a stir with a long wooden spoon.

Weird like Aunt Irma’s beard! But that’s your dye. And stirring is your friend: stir often. Stir right before you go to bed. Stir right after you get up. Stir when you walk past the bowls. BUT: DO NOT STIR for a couple of hours before you are ready to dye. Color is not the only thing stirring into that water; you’re also getting some bean particles that you really want to settle to the bottom of the bowls.  Those beany bits have proteins that will turn your beautiful blue into a much less interesting gray.

Step 3: Dyeing the Fiber

You will need: Prepped bowls of beans & water, dyepot, mordanted fiber, latex gloves

Tip: I usually prep the beans this while my mordant pots are boiling – then I let the mordant pot cool overnight while the beans soak and am ready to dye in the morning.

When the beans have soaked sufficiently (less than 24 hours if you want to use the beans for anything else), skim all the fluid out of the bowls into the dyepot. Try to do this without disturbing the beans at the bottom too much; you don’t want those proteins getting into the water you’re skimming off.

Tip: since no chemicals have yet touched these beans, you can still use them for cooking! Cook them up now and can or freeze them, or just freeze them as-is. I put them in gallon ziploc bags with enough water to cover them and lay them flat to freeze into massive bean-blocks.

For this example, I am using some beautiful grey wool from Breezy Willow. If you use white, of course you will get a truer blue hue than I did in this case, but the resulting color is always on the grey side, in my opinion. In other words, there’s no way to get deep or royal blue with this stuff.

Add the mordanted wool to the dyepot (using gloves if it’s still wet with mordant water) and… leave it to sit. I suppose you could boil it, but everyone I got info from just let it sit on the porch or under a sunny window for a few days. I would do it outside, but we got a couple of frosts last week, and I’d really rather not deal with frozen wool.

Leave it for at least a few days. I’ve left it for as long as a week (though in that case, cover it – critters. I won’t say more.)

Rinse thoroughly, lay flat to dry out of direct sunlight, and glory in the beautiful grey-blue you’ve just created.

If you are dyeing unprocessed wool, you will get some natural variation. For some reason, this dye takes more to the greasier tips of fleece locks than the cleaner bases. Carded up, it all blends into a slight heather. When dyeing yarn, I like to only put half the hank in the dyepot and leave the other half out to drip into a bowl. The liquid will soak up through the yarn not in the pot (I think that’s called capillary action – any middle-school science teachers out there?) and give an elegant gradient.

Not happy with gentle grey-blue? Want a darker color than you’re getting? There are a few things you can do:

(1) Use the smallest container you can for the fiber, and only soak the beans in enough liquid that you’ll be able to cover the fiber. This will give you the highest possible dye-to-water ratio.

(2) Use more beans.

(3) Use superwash wool – it supposedly takes all dyes better, but I’ve only noticed a striking difference with this particular dye.