Natural Dyes

[David]

I was hunting for someone

to dye my garments naturally, asking around I got this response from one person:

Hi David,

 

Unfortunately, "organic dyeing" is really a contradiction in terms.  Most natural dyes are unreliable and variable (ie they fade), with colour variations caused by temperature, season, moisture content etc.  Some plant dyes work by themselves (mainly on wool - the most common are walnut shells and onion skins) but most "natural" dyes for fabric require heavy metal mordants to fix the colour.  Very un-eco friendly in fact.

 

There is only a little bit of eco dyeing done in Australasia, and even less on a  commercial scale.  Consequently I stick to chemical dyes that have proved to be safe and reliable over the past century or so.  I am actually an organic gardener so am not saying this to rubbish what you're looking for - I have looked at this for my own business but my research showed it not to be viable.  Good luck with your search.

So I am a bit baffled by all this so it looks as if I'll be doing my own dyeing which is not something I wanted. Ideally I thought I would be able to find some passionate nutter who had all the knowledge and equipment that I could pay.I can't find anyone so it looks like I'm going to be doing it myself. Which looking on the bright side will offer me control and perhaps blue hands, and that can't be bad right?

Righto then here's a list of natural/vegetable dyeing websites and stuff.

Eco Colour - by India Flint http://www.indiaflint.com/ I might review her book in the book club group.

Dye - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Dyeing | Color Factory

Fabricare Organics

Fibre Spectrum Co-operative, Nelson, New Zealand

Gandhigram Trust - Natural Dye Unit

natural dyes

NaturalDyes : Natural Dyes List

Naturally Dyed Textiles - Natural Dyes International - An Education...

SDCANZ - Homepage

The Natural Dye Studio

Hope they are of help...HELP!


New links:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_dye

http://www.pburch.net/drupal/

http://www.hands.co.nz/

 

http://botanicalcolors.com/

 

 

[Vivienne Williams]

Hi David,
Well looks like we have both been down the same road! I have an interesting email from Colour & CHemicals who supply GOTS approved dyes if you would like me to forward it to you. I decided against dyeing my own for now due to the huge set up costs and minimums of dye powder I would have to purchase first off. Having said that it would be cool to have ones own unique colours, that alone would be a great unique selling point.
I vaugely remember reading something somewhere about a joker who had invented a natural oil based mordant and uses it on natural dyes...will try to dig up this info out of my bottomless pit of favourites...they were in the US of course.
Bye for now,
Viv

[David]

Yeah for sure, email or cut and paste it to me, although I think I'm going to go it alone and do real hard core natural dyeing. I have in the past week been experimenting with about 6 different common substances with good results. The thing with the color factory and other outfits is that even with the standards I'm still not overly convinced that it is a 100% organic, environmentally friendly method. I think it is undoubtedly a better method than so called conventional, but not by any means the best (or acceptable). Hey I've thought of a new word! I'll add it to our New Word Order!

Cheers mate,

David

[David]

This may be of interest to some of you....

Have you been dyeing to source your own custom t-shirt colours but the minimums in China made you want to crawl up and dye? Well you don’t have to dye wondering because AS Colour is now carrying stock of the AAA5601 prepared for dye t-shirt so you can colour your own t-shirts right here in New Zealand.

Bad puns aside, we figured if you can print your own t-shirt here why not dye them as well. Controlling the dye process here in New Zealand has a lot of benefits, you can ensure that all dye chemicals used are ecologically friendly and will be recycled in a sustainable way plus you can dye to order on small runs without having to commit to large stock orders.

So if you’ve ever thought you could create a better t-shirt colour than us please read the information below to find out all there is to know about garment dyeing, I’m sure you’re dyeing to. Sorry, I just had to slip that in there.


All you need to know about PFD t-shirts and Garment dyeing:
Prepared for dye t-shirts are the perfect option for matching an exact fabric colour when you can’t source it from a stock service t-shirt range. Our AAA5601 PFD t-shirts are made by in our friends in Thailand and are supplied by Alstyle Apparel, one of the world’s leading t-shirt companies. They are made from 100% cotton including all stitching so the garment will dye completely and consistently. The weight of the shirts before dyeing is 130GSM and after the dyeing process they bulk up to about 150GSM. PFD shirts are designed to shrink one size down after the dye wash and there is only minimal twisting on the finished garment. An enzyme wash is included as part of the process which gives the shirt a soft feel and a fine print face.

Garment dyeing is generally charged by weight. We recommend North Shore Dyers in Auckland who charge $9.15 per kilo with a minimum order charge of $112.50 which equates to about 70 t-shirts per dye run, smaller amounts can be dyed but the minimum charge will apply. There are roughly six shirts per kilo so the cost per unit on a run of 70 shirts will work out to be around $1.60 excluding GST.
All the Reactive dyes used by North Shore dyers are free from harmful chemicals like Pesticide and Formaldehyde and they have been approved to the highest ecological standards of the Oeko-Tex standard certification.

For Pricing please contact me.

Regards, Dan Bycroft
AS Colour

[Anthea Marie Grob]

Well, Aura Herbal Textiles Ltd dye cloth naturally, I haven't used them as yet, but their correspondence is good, and they point out some of the advantages of natural dying on their website which put things in a different light; as in some of the dyestuffs provide antibacterial properties, etc so are not just neutral on the cloth, also there new research on mordants such as sugar as a indigo mordant, so personally I am rethinking the natural dye idea.

[David]

Thanks Anthea!

http://www.auraherbalwear.com/

Note: This company is based in India.