This is a work in progress.

All of the trials have been made on linen and jute, two vegetable fibres made available at the Fablab, and common to the Yucatan area.

So far we experimented with:

Chaya leaves - no fixative/mordant

Fablab berries - salt

Purple Onion peels - vinegar

Avocado seeds - vinegar

CHAYA LEAVES

Chaya leaves are a local specialty of Yucatan, used to make agua frescas and other delicacies. The color of agua fresca de chaya is a bright light green and we wanted to see if that color would come out as a textile dye.

We didn't use a fixative/mordant, to see if the color would fix to the textile at all or not. In Peru, when I joined a natural dyeing class on unbleached wool, none of the dyes used fixative/mordant and I wanted to see if it was a critical component in this case.

I boiled a pot of water together with the Chaya leaves. I left the leaves simmering for about an hour before adding the linen and jute samples, so more color was released in the water.

I kept the linen and jute in the pot with Chaya leaves for about 1 hour and then removed it.

The emerging color is a pale green on the lighter side, with hints of yellowish.

I will try the same with fixative as well, to see the difference.

YUCATECAN (FABLAB) BERRIES

The berries were squeezed yet not boiled.

The linen was out in salt together with the squeezed berries and their juice.

PURPLE ONION

The linen and jute in this case were soaked in

1/4 white vinegar

3/4 cold water

For 1 hour to enable color fixation.

Flor de Jamaica

Golden Onions

Mandarin Peels

Carrot

Green Tomato Leaves

Bouganivileas

BIOPLASTIC BIO-DYEING