Madder Day 4 & 5

Day 4
On the afternoon of Day 4, it was time to take my madder dye off of the low heat, and filter it. I setup a bucket, lined with a cotton dish towel, with a sieve resting on top. my instructions actually called for a fine cotton bag... which is what I thought I had. upon closer inspection of the package I had, it actually said "flour sack towels" not "flour sack" ...but it turned out to work just as well.

By this time, the madder had cooled a bit, and the dye is still very dark

I poured the dye bath through the sieve, catching all of the bigger chunks of of madder root

Next, I gathered the cotton towel, lifted it out of the bucket, and placed it back in the sieve. It filtered out the finer madder root debris from the dye.


Here's a picture of the fine debris the cotton towel caught


Meanwhile I weighed out 60 grams of alum (once again, the internet told me it was approx 2.12 ounces) :)


Next, I measured out 1200mL of distilled water, and warmed it to 40*C

When I poured the alum in, most of it sunk directly to the bottom of the beaker. It did eventually dissolve, but it took several minutes of stirring.


Once dissolved, the water still looked a bit cloudy. My understanding is that the alum will eventually settle back out of the water. The idea is to attach the color to it first, so that when it settles, it becomes the pigment.

With Mike's help, we slowly poured the alum solution into the dye while stirring constantly. It created an orange froth on top of the dye, which my instructions indicate is a good thing. Now it's time to let it sit for 3 days, stirring once or twice a day.


Day 5
After stirring today, I noticed that the dye and froth had turned significantly more reddish. Must be the alum that made the difference? It will sit like this for another two days.