Back to Black
There’s a few different ways to achieve a natural black dye- or get close to it. It’s all about the layers. With this process I was able to get a true black- no hues of any color I used in the layering process.
I’m going to skip to scouring/mordant and tell you about the dye and assistant I used to achieve black.
*If you’re looking for a lighter shade grey-light grey, shorten your soak time in each step*
Pomegranate Skins
Logwood
Iron
You start by placing your prepared fabrics into your pomegranate dye pot. you want to let your fabric sit in this dye pot for a while. Really let the fabric soak up as much as it can. This is important because this is your base color and you need to start off strong. You can take it out or let your fabric cool in the dye pot. It’s important you wring and rinse before the next step. You do not want to dilute the next dye pot with pomegranate dye.
If you have the room, while you’re working on the first layer of color, you can bring your logwood dye pot up to temp. So its ready when you are. Fully submerge your fabric into the pot. Remember to wring and rinse your fabrics before the next step!
Now your fabrics are ready for the final layer- iron, ferrous sulfate. You can find this easily in powder form… or!! you can make your own concoction. We are renovating my house so I had a surplus of rusty nails. I placed them in a mason jar and let them soak in some tap water for a few weeks. Fully soak your fabric in the iron water (if you made your own remember to take out the nails!) Depending on the fabric- this might toughen it. With my cotton it made the fabric very hard to hand stitch/quilt. The raw silk I used had no change to its body.
Wring and rinse and let it dry! After that you can wash and dry and being your craft work. You may want to give it a tumble dry to soften the fabrics.
And thats it! You will have achieved black or your various shades of grey. If it doesn’t work the first time, if it’s not quite black enough, go back and repeat. Keep adding the layers!
A Look after the second layer of color.
Here’s what my fabrics looked like coming out of the logwood dye pot the first time. My first go about this, my tests fabrics were dark grey- so I repeated the three layers again.