I Tried to Plant Dye With My Own Woad

Hello, and welcome to another plant dyeing video. I have understood that I've fallen more and more in love with plant dyeing. I think it's just so incredibly fun to take natural pigments and plants and achieve these historical shades and colors. I think it's just intriguing and interesting. But there's one part of the color palette that I haven't explored yet, and that is the green and blue shades. And if you know me, that's my favorite colors. So for a long time, I have been very, very excited to try those plants that are required to achieve those shades. But the problem is that those color processes are a bit more complicated than the other ones. So, you know, I have been putting it forward in time for quite a while. But this spring, I got some rhodes seeds. And rhodes is, if you have seen my previous plant dyeing video, you maybe know what it is. It's a plant that gives you blue color pigment. And as I've understood, it was the primary plant that was used to achieve blue colors and shades. Today, indigo are often used instead, because it's basically the same pigment. It's the same, you know, color substance, but it's more concentrated in the indigo instead. So that's why it's more often used. But as I said, I got some rhodes seeds this spring, and I put them down in my garden. And I just could watch them grow. And, you know, a majority of them died. That wasn't fun to watch. And I've really built a relation to these plants now. And, you know, they're like my friends now and have gotten quite big. And I thought that we could pick them today and see if we can get a color of them. And that is exciting in so many levels. Because firstly, dyeing with indigo and rhodes is a bit different from dyeing with other dyes. And secondly, I just love blue, so this is so fun. And thirdly, it's so fun to dye with something you've grown yourself. I just think it's going to be so interesting to see if it works. So why is this different from dyeing with other plant dyes then? The answer is that when you're dyeing with rhodes and indigo, now I don't really know anything about science, but basically we're going to reduce the oxygen and then adding oxygen. Sometimes we're going to be raising and lowering the pH value. So this is a bit more scientific than other plant dyeing can be. Because basically we're going to add a few chemicals as well. You may have heard that they used pee to dye in the Middle Ages. We're not going to do that today because... I don't even have to explain that. Because I don't want to dye with pee. So I have bought ammonia instead. And the thing is, you should not breathe in this. You should not eat this. You should not get this in your eyes and on your skin. That's dangerous, which is good to know. And then we have... I don't even know how to pronounce this in Swedish. I will not even try to do it in English. But it's this. Maria, who I bought this from, said that if I blend this with water before adding this, it's going to create a gas that is very toxic. What I basically wanted to say with this was that if you're doing this at home, do it outside or somewhere where you have good ventilation. Because you don't want to breathe all of this in. And also use gloves, maybe glasses, a mask, just to avoid breathing this in. So to be able to find instructions, I had to search over all the internet. And here I have written down things I found the most. And you know, got to blend between them. And I also watched Maddy V's video here on YouTube. Which I will link in the description if you want to watch it. It's very good. So now we're going to go out in this cloudy fall day. And pick my boat. I don't have that much well, but I really, really hope that it will be enough. And when I have picked everything, I'm going to rinse it with cold water a couple of times. And then I have it all in here. So now we're going to soak this with hot water. I don't think it will matter that much with the amount of water. The most important thing is to just keep all the leaves covered with that water. So how much could that be? Maybe 10 liters will be enough. Yeah. Warm water and leaves in here. And now we need something to cover it up with. Don't know what that would be. And then we're going to wait 20 to 40 minutes for it to really soak through. And after 40 minutes we need to remove all leaves. So that we have just some brown or red water left. I'm going to double check my instructions again. I'm quite in search right now because there's no amounts anywhere. So I don't know how much ammonia I will have. The only thing I know is that I want to reach 9 to 10 pH. Let's try this. This is so scary. Okay, I'm going to fetch some gloves and maybe something other to wear. And then we're going to make this toxic. 48, 49. That's perfect. Because we want this to be around 50 degrees. So that's perfect. And then my mother fetched some pH papers from her job. And then we can take one stripe into the water and compare it to one of these images here. To be able to see exactly what the value is. So let's start by adding one deciliter of ammonia. This has, you know, a kid's luck that I can't get into it. Is that an intelligence test or an age test? Because if that's true, I'm not a grown up yet. Why do I always have to smell things? Oh god, this is strong. This is incredibly strong. Okay, I need to open my window. Okay, the window is open. Okay, this is extremely strong. I don't know how I will be able to do this. Yeah. Horrible thing I have with that. Okay, I'm going to edit now. You will not believe me, but this is turning green now. So from red to green. Okay, so now we're going to see if this did anything to the pH value. This is one of those. How long should I keep it here? Oh god. Yeah, this is definitely 9 or 10. Okay, great. I succeeded. So let's see what the instruction says now. Okay, so now it's time to add oxygen. How we will do that is that we will... There's two ways of doing that. You can either throw the water from the two buckets a couple of times. Or you can take the electric whisk. I don't really think I want anything in this kitchen to have that on it. So I think I will go out and do it outside. And we want to continue doing this until the water gets greenish blue or blue. I'm now seeing that the bath is slowly changing its color. And now I see some blue foam in there, which is really nice. And now we're going to heat this up to 50 to 60 degrees. And for that we will need a stove. If you remember my last video, the matter of pot and pot size and finding a good pot was... I'm afraid that my pot is way too small. Which is the problem always when I'm trying to plant dye. I remember now that this pot doesn't work on the stove. I don't have a pot that is big enough for plant dyeing. Present. The whole video. And after that I finally decided to buy a dyeing pot. And here... It is. And I thought that if you can buy a big one, why not buy a big one? Or more like, if you can ruin yourself, why not ruin yourself? But this is it. This is my dyeing pot. And now we're going to pour this into the stove. And heat it up to 50 to 60 degrees. And now it's time to add this into it. And all the recipes are saying different things. But one of them mentioned 5 grams per liter. I remember now that I have 10 liters of water. So 10 multiplied with 5 is 50 grams. It feels like I've been looking forward to this for so incredibly long. And now I should do it. The thing is, I'm not entirely sure how to do this. Because I haven't got that much water in here. The fabrics I will dye today are two small pieces of wool. A thin wool twill. That I could possibly sew a dress from. If this turns out well. I guess I'm just going to put it down there. And then not move it around apparently. Because we don't want any oxygen in the bath. And wait for 5, 10 or 15 minutes. I'm so nervous. Did you think it was going to be blue? Do you see that it turned blue? What happened there? Okay, I'm quite sure that the problem was that I had too small amount of water. I wasn't thinking. It turned blue. Which I'm so grateful for. But... No. Okay. I made a plan B. What is my plan B? I don't think I want to add any water to the bath. Because that could add oxygen as well. And we don't want oxygen. So I think I will take the other piece and cut it in smaller pieces. And see if that works better. Okay, let's try to take up this one and see how that goes. I have cracked the code. I have succeeded. I think so anyway. Look at this. I will wash it through. Obviously later. But doesn't it look nice? I think it looks fantastic. Okay, it's not strong at all. I can see that. But it's definitely better. So I think I will do the same for the other half as well. And hope that that will go equally as well. So I was continuing the whole evening yesterday to see if I could improve this in some way. Some of the fabrics I did several times. Some of them I put in the bath for a longer amount of time. Some of them shorter time. And some of them I tried to see if I could get more oxygen to them later after it. And this is the result. It isn't the strongest colors I've seen. Far from it. Do I hate the colors? No. I mean, I would gladly dress in these colors and have them in my room and on the walls. But as medieval clothing? The result is questionable. So if you remember the first fabric, it became very uneven. And I think that was due to the amount of water compared to the amount of fabric. I didn't have enough water. So after chopping the other piece in half, I decided to do the same to this. And when I put it in the water for the second time, it actually became much more even. I think I put this in the bath three times in total. And the strange thing was that it became more grey for each time I dipped it. So I don't know what happened there. And then we have the other fabric, which actually is another fabric. Which was very clear, because the color became very different. It's much more green. I don't know if you can see. And it became quite even, which I'm very happy about. And then we have this, which I dipped this very morning, actually. I think the bath had brought too much oxygen during the night. Maybe that's why it's green. You can't really see it in the camera, but it's much stronger in reality. Yeah, you don't see that at all. Hello, Editing Eileen here. I just wanted to pop in and say one thing, which I noticed now when editing this video. Which I saw in real life, but it became so much clearer when looking at it on the computer. And that was the difference between the fabrics when I picked them up from the bath, and just after the dyeing, compared to the day after. Did you notice that? Because the difference is huge. If you know why this may have happened, please let me know. Because this can't be right. You can't have the color changing like this. I'm very glad now that I wasn't really happy with the color from the start. Because if I would have been, this would have made me so upset. I just wanted to say that. And yeah, let's get back to the kitchen. So, what do I think went wrong? It's hard to know. During the whole process of this, I was uncertain so many times. It could have been something with the plants. With when I picked the plants, you know, it has been cold outside for quite a long time. Maybe it was something with the water I used. With the amount of chemicals I put in. When I put in the ammonia, I mean, I reached over 10, maybe 11, I don't even know if that's possible. But it was way too high. And I don't know how much of that other strange chemical I put in. I think it was too much as well. Maybe it happened something when I poured the bath between the buckets. Maybe it was something with how I put the fabric in the bath. How I took it out and handled it all. There's so many things that could have gone wrong here. And maybe many things that did go wrong. Not only one. To be honest, I don't hate these colors. If I put on my modern eye, I think they're beautiful. But if I put on my historical eyes, it's a disaster. I don't think if you dyed with woad in the Middle Ages that you would accept this. I think you would over-dye it or something. Which I may actually do. I have a dream of dyeing a 15th century overdress with woad. And I actually thought that I maybe could have done this now. But apparently not. But now I'm even more excited to buy indigo instead and dye with that. And see if I can get a real blue with that. And maybe I will take one of these and over-dye them as well. But what was my question with this video? My question was if I could take my own woad and dye with that and get a color. And the answer of that is yes. It was possible. Did I achieve a strong blue? No. I didn't. But I'm very glad that I tried and I've learned a lot. So that's always something. If you like this video, please let me know as usual. I have a couple of plant dye videos actually planned. The indigo, which I mentioned before. And also some welds, which I will blend with iron to get green. Which would be so exciting. And I also have a sewing video, which I will go and finish now. And publish soon, I hope. But until then, I hope you take very much care and have a good time. And I hope that I will see you soon. Bye.