Dying With Logwood

LOGWOOD

Materials:

2 tablespoons extract from logwood

¼ tablespoon aluminum sodium sulfate

2 cups water

Silk

Procedure:

First I heated the water on a hot plate so that it was hot but not yet boiling. Then I added the logwood and mordant to keep the dye to the fibers. Then after that I added my silk sample and let it sit in the dye bath for about ten minutes before removing. Once I pulled the silk sample out I rinsed it with cool water.

Analysis:

Once the silk was removed from the dye bath and then rinsed off it lost most of its color. The dye bath was complete lamp black, and it originally dyed the silk the same shade, but the more I rinsed the silk off, the more color it lost. After about a day of the silk being out of the dye bath and drying it lost nearly all of its color. I think another mordant should have been used like maybe tin or copper, but I did not know since initially the silk took the dye of logwood really well, it just faded drastically with time and oxidation.