What is indigo?
Indigo is a blue dyestuff produced naturally from plants or manufactured synthetically.
What plant does it come from?
There are 3 plants that make indigo
Legeminosae(pea family)
The most famous indigo bearing plant is indigofera tinctoria commonly known as indigo. It is a shrub originally grown in India southeast Asia, and the middle east this plant grows to 2 meters or 5 ½ feet
Crusiferae(cabbage family)
This plant is isatis tinctoria commonly known as weed. The plant was grown in the Mediterranean and western Asia. Weed can be grown in North America and continues to grow in Europe
Polygonaccae(dock family)
Dock is the name applied to a group of broad-leaved wayside weeds. Rhubarb comes from the same family. Commonly called Japanese or Chinese indigo the plan grows up to a meter or almost 40 inches high. This plant has the highest concentration of indigo.
What makes indigos history interesting?
Historians claim indigo was used as far back as 5000BC. Mummies from Egyptian tombs from about 2500 BC have been found covered by indigo dyed hemp fabrics. It’s also interesting to note that hemp textiles arrived earlier to the world than cotton. Natural indigo dyes have been found in Africa, China, India, Indonesia, South and Central America. It is a dye that has always been revered for its natural resistance to light color fastness.
TIP: If you wear indigo on a while couch and rub around the couch will turn blue so watch out for rubbing fastness.
In the 19th century India exported so much raw indigo dyestuff that 1 million people were employed in either production or transport to Europe. This may not seem like a big deal but if we compare this with “today” world where six hundred percent more people live Indies indigo business would employ 6 million it was indeed a pretty significant business. At one point it was the largest export business in the world.
How is Indigo dyed?
Once upon a time indigo yarn or fabric was dyed by hand. Fortunately there are still a few factories around the world that hand dye indigo.
We went to a factory in Okayama Japan many years ago where a crusty man in jeans wearing rubber gloves and boots simply took a hank (skeins of yearn) and by lever dropped the hanks into an indigo bath. The tub could have held 12 cans of beer and ice. He allowed the yarn to sir in the dye (which is actually green) for about 20 seconds. Then he levered the yarns out of the water, squeezing the moisture out and let the yarns oxidize. By redoing the same process over and over (called dipping) the dyer was able to achieve various indigo shades, clearly the more dips he created the darker the shade.
What are the 3 ways to dye indigo today?
Rope dyeing – A group of 360 un-dyed yarns are twisted together and dyed as a single unit called a rope. This system allows all the randomly entwined yarns to be treated identically. The rope runs through a long machine where the yarn is dipped into the indigo pulled out to oxidize and redipped again into the indigo bath. Most rope dyed machines are long enough to allow 6-8 dips. Rope dye is a preferable method of dyeing for color consistency.
Slasher dyeing- Each yarn is laid parallel to one another across a cylinder or beam and each yarn moves through the dye process individually.
Loop dying – Instead of dropping the yarns into six or eight baths there is only one you can figure out if you are paying attention the limitation of this dye system.
Indigo is a blue dyestuff produced naturally from plants or manufactured synthetically.
What plant does it come from?
There are 3 plants that make indigo
Legeminosae(pea family)
The most famous indigo bearing plant is indigofera tinctoria commonly known as indigo. It is a shrub originally grown in India southeast Asia, and the middle east this plant grows to 2 meters or 5 ½ feet
Crusiferae(cabbage family)
This plant is isatis tinctoria commonly known as weed. The plant was grown in the Mediterranean and western Asia. Weed can be grown in North America and continues to grow in Europe
Polygonaccae(dock family)
Dock is the name applied to a group of broad-leaved wayside weeds. Rhubarb comes from the same family. Commonly called Japanese or Chinese indigo the plan grows up to a meter or almost 40 inches high. This plant has the highest concentration of indigo.
What makes indigos history interesting?
Historians claim indigo was used as far back as 5000BC. Mummies from Egyptian tombs from about 2500 BC have been found covered by indigo dyed hemp fabrics. It’s also interesting to note that hemp textiles arrived earlier to the world than cotton. Natural indigo dyes have been found in Africa, China, India, Indonesia, South and Central America. It is a dye that has always been revered for its natural resistance to light color fastness.
TIP: If you wear indigo on a while couch and rub around the couch will turn blue so watch out for rubbing fastness.
In the 19th century India exported so much raw indigo dyestuff that 1 million people were employed in either production or transport to Europe. This may not seem like a big deal but if we compare this with “today” world where six hundred percent more people live Indies indigo business would employ 6 million it was indeed a pretty significant business. At one point it was the largest export business in the world.
How is Indigo dyed?
Once upon a time indigo yarn or fabric was dyed by hand. Fortunately there are still a few factories around the world that hand dye indigo.
We went to a factory in Okayama Japan many years ago where a crusty man in jeans wearing rubber gloves and boots simply took a hank (skeins of yearn) and by lever dropped the hanks into an indigo bath. The tub could have held 12 cans of beer and ice. He allowed the yarn to sir in the dye (which is actually green) for about 20 seconds. Then he levered the yarns out of the water, squeezing the moisture out and let the yarns oxidize. By redoing the same process over and over (called dipping) the dyer was able to achieve various indigo shades, clearly the more dips he created the darker the shade.
What are the 3 ways to dye indigo today?
Rope dyeing – A group of 360 un-dyed yarns are twisted together and dyed as a single unit called a rope. This system allows all the randomly entwined yarns to be treated identically. The rope runs through a long machine where the yarn is dipped into the indigo pulled out to oxidize and redipped again into the indigo bath. Most rope dyed machines are long enough to allow 6-8 dips. Rope dye is a preferable method of dyeing for color consistency.
Slasher dyeing- Each yarn is laid parallel to one another across a cylinder or beam and each yarn moves through the dye process individually.
Loop dying – Instead of dropping the yarns into six or eight baths there is only one you can figure out if you are paying attention the limitation of this dye system.
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