Woad is one of those plants that has a popular place in Scottish history as it was used by the Picts earning them the name, 'painted people'.
There is a romance associated with producing a blue dye from woad. It is an easy plant to grow and produces millions of seeds. However some dedication is required as considerable quantities of woad's cabbagey leaves must be chopped and the dye extracted rather laboriously. One kilo of leaves can yield, at most, 4 grams of dye extract.
We have done this, and produced blue yarn in small quantities. Similarly we have used home grown Japanese Indigo and followed a similar process to achieve similar results. The good news is that extracts of woad and indigo are readily available to purchase and (unapologetically) this is what we use to produce beautiful blue yarn. We overdye chamomile or weld dyed yarn to give greens. The variety of shades is almost unbelievable and the indigo dyepot is the most exciting and challenging as results are dependent on pH, temperature and not introducing oxygen. It is a worthwhile challenge in our view.
We have tried several recipes for the indigo bath, but never quite plucked up the courage to collect urine from male visitors. Being a purist has its limits and indigo has brought us face to face with some of them.
Jenny Dean's recipe for indigo powder, Method 1 in her book "Colours from Nature" 2nd revised edition is a reliable winner.
Ah...Jenny's recipe for woad leaves has just caught my attention. I might give that a go sometime?
Other plant dye recipes we use can be found on our sister web site www.selvage.co.uk
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