Natural Indigo Tinctoria

Description

Indigo – Indigofera tinctoria – Indigo is the only natural blue dye used by many cultures in unrelated places on every continent. Each culture, each village, each dyer has a unique way of making the magic of indigo work, and there are rituals surrounding the success of the extraction and dye process. Stories unfold about why this vat was successful and another failed. Our indigo is extra-strong, finely powdered and easy to use. This particular indigo is ideal for producing greens when over-dyed with any of the yellow dyes, and you can obtain lime green to forest depending on the dye and number of dips. We offer two recipes – a traditional fermentation vat, and a chemically-reduced vat. We recommend a mild alkali and thiourea dioxide to reduce the chemical vat.

Note: you will need to obtain a small amount of sodium hydroxide (household lye) to make your indigo stock solution. This can be purchased at a local
hardware store or online from soap-making suppliers.