Mordant Day

My art friend Johanna, who always inspires me, was talking about mordants.  I told her I didn't use mordants, but truth be told, I did an internet search for mordants, and found this at Wikipedia:

A mordant is a substance used to set dyes on fabrics 

There were actually two types of mordants: acidic and alkaline.  Two of the most common (let's not include urine, which is also a common mordant) are

alum, a product I first used in my eco fabric dyeing, and iron. 

Boy, can I produce IRON.  All you need is a glass jar, something or THINGS that are already rusty, vinegar that you fill halfway in said jar where the rusty item(s) have previously been placed, and water, used to fill the jar the rest of the way.

Seal the lid on the jar and wait until the water turns orange.  This is the hard part, because it can take up to a month for the liquid in the jar to turn into iron mordant.  The ironic thing is, I just had some of that orange water I poured into my flower bed the day before I learned how to make iron mordant compliments of the internet.

I learned you can use mordants in three ways, pre-mordanting (fabric treated with mordant before dyeing), meta-mordanting (adding the mordant to the dye bath), and post-mordanting (fabric treated with mordant after it is dyed).  For my purposes, I will be adding the mordant either during or after the dyeing process, since all my fabrics are dyed in non-conventional manners using non-conventional dyeing substances.

Thanks for visiting today, because this is an important step in my learning how to dye better, how to make my dyed fabrics colorfast, and how to change the actual color after the dye has been administered.  I promise to keep you posted, too, although this is not a quick process.