Natural Indigo Dyeing

This summer I wanted to learn to dye with natural indigo.  Michel Garcia is an expert at natural indigo dyeing so I learned his method called the 1-2-3 method.  You use one part indigo powder, two parts lime and three parts antioxidant.  In my case I used fructose as an antioxidant.  I did a lot of reading and I watched videos online to learn how to make the vat.  It's a bit tricky.  You have to get the ph right and the temperature right.  Anyways I finally made a vat a few days ago.  I wore a dust mask to mix the ingredients.   I made it in a large jar so I could see if the colour was right.  At first it didn't seem to be separating and changing colour.  I then put the jar in a bowl of hot water.  It warmed up to 50 C and then it worked.  I saw the layers separating and the top liquid looking green/brown.  Here's the jar with my indigo mixture in it.

Here's a close up of the "flower" in the top of the vat.

I decided to transfer everything into an asparagus steamer pan I bought specifically for this.  It has a steamer basket that you can put inside the pan.  That way you can keep fabric from touching the bottom where there might be sediment.

Here are some fabrics after I pulled them out of the vat.  They look bright green at first, then quickly get darker green and finally turn blue as they oxygenate.

Here are some of the fabrics on the washline afterwards. I washed them in hot water and rinsed them out. The two on the left started out light yellow that's why they look greenish. The one on the right started out white so the colour is all indigo.

And a few more...  It's fun to tie the fabric and bind it to get designs.  I want to experiment more with this.  Thanks for having a look!