Tengu, Bilmo, inspired blanket coat
- Thread starter Pignut
- Start date
Biker
Bushcrafter (boy, I've got a lot to say!)
Hey Pignut that pretty damned impressive. Seeing smocks and homemade woolen blanket coats was one of the things I looked for on Google and found this forum because of that. I have two old woolen blankets I'd always promised myself I'd make into a smock type coat one day. Seeing your work has rekindled that desire, and all hand sewn too? WOW!
Really classy piece of work that mate, I'm well impressed! And well done!
Really classy piece of work that mate, I'm well impressed! And well done!
Cheapest floor sweeping tea or teabags you can find, stronger the better and brew them up as strong as you can. Make sure you've got the wool as clean as you can and it's still sodden wet and then put it into the dye. I use a big black bin so that I can move the fabric around in loads of water. It's wool, the tea is tannin, even if it ferments slightly it won't rot the wool if it's left soaking for a week, it'll just slowly reinforce the dye.
Tannin doesn't need a mordant (a fixative) and it'll change that pink for you to a brownish colour of some sort.
If you have access to masses of oak galls or walnut husks, you can get much the same effect.
Oak is better with iron mordant, but that iron, it rots wool so ca' canny with it.
Copper on the other hand actually strengthens the fibres, but copper mordant needs careful handling, it's toxic in any strength. If you do want to use it, soak some offcuts of copper pipe in ammonia. That'll give you a beautiful ink blue mordant and that will help darken the colour of the tannin on the wool. You need to either soak the wet wool in the diluted copper mordant, or mix the mordant into your dyebath and get the wool in quick. Otherwise the mordant will help the tannin dye your dyebath and not your wool iimmc.
Lot of folks advocate salt but I don't find it does much apart from help berry dyes tbh, though it's needed for the commercial chrome (spit, hiss,
incredibly toxic stuff, causes feminization of the invertebrates at the bottom end of the food chain, just to give a brighter, sharper, colour!) dyes.You do know we can buy green wool for £8 a metre ? I like recycling, I really do, but sometimes the logistics aren't the best option.
cheers,
Toddy
Coffee generally gives pale fawns/beige colours; teas give orangey browns. Got to be worth a try though, especially if it's not going to cost anything The coffee might well mute the pink to a kind of liver colour.......a lot better than pink in our woodlands that's for sure .....yet pink blankets were very popular in north America for clothing.
cheers,
Toddy
The coffee might well mute the pink to a kind of liver colour.......a lot better than pink in our woodlands that's for sure .....yet pink blankets were very popular in north America for clothing.cheers,
Toddy
I have an old pink witney blanket. I might try the tea dye. I drink enough of the stuff so i might as well make use of the dregs. Used tea is ok is it?
Should be it might take more of it, but it'll still leach out colour and tannins into the dye liquor
I'd really like to see what all these blankets turn out like
Our water is very soft, and if I dye elsewhere sometimes the results can be at odds with what I expect....not so much the colour but the depth and the brightness of that colour.
cheers,
M
it might take more of it, but it'll still leach out colour and tannins into the dye liquor I'd really like to see what all these blankets turn out like
Our water is very soft, and if I dye elsewhere sometimes the results can be at odds with what I expect....not so much the colour but the depth and the brightness of that colour.
cheers,
M
I have a large stainless vessel to heat the dye in - should I boil the wool and for how long? Worried it's going to stink of stale coffee
Wondering whether to chuck some oak bark in too or does it have to be fresh/live? Desperate to get going (but need a plasma cutter to open the beer barrel to make it useable)
I'd boil the coffee grounds in a big pot, seperately from the wool.....it's a right bu88er to get some dyestuff debris out of wool after the dyeing, it's often a lot better to make the dye and 'then' dye the wool. You can boil the oak bark with the grounds if you like, it won't go amiss
Wool will take boiling, but, and it needs minding this but, it doesn't do thermal shock well. So, bring it slowly up to heat, and slowly down again. Don't agitate it vigorously when it is in hot water either, you really don't want a woolly brick
Been there, done that, makes a great seat pad but not much use for a shirt.
There's only one other caveat; I have no idea what processes your wool has been through. I don't know if it's been chemically treated so that it won't felt anyway, or if the scouring has left it fragile, or if it was woven from very, very short staple fleece. So, to some extent we're working on the ideal; a good sound, pure wool blanket I do know that it's been dyed pink since no sheep comes that colour naturally (yet ?), so at some point it's had mordanting. If it's been carefully looked after it might well soak up your dye like a sponge which would be pretty good
Sorry Pignut your shirt started this whole thread, and it's been hi-jacked. It's a good shirt and interesting thread though
cheers,
M
Wool will take boiling, but, and it needs minding this but, it doesn't do thermal shock well. So, bring it slowly up to heat, and slowly down again. Don't agitate it vigorously when it is in hot water either, you really don't want a woolly brick
Been there, done that, makes a great seat pad
but not much use for a shirt.There's only one other caveat; I have no idea what processes your wool has been through. I don't know if it's been chemically treated so that it won't felt anyway, or if the scouring has left it fragile, or if it was woven from very, very short staple fleece. So, to some extent we're working on the ideal; a good sound, pure wool blanket
I do know that it's been dyed pink since no sheep comes that colour naturally (yet ?), so at some point it's had mordanting. If it's been carefully looked after it might well soak up your dye like a sponge which would be pretty good Sorry Pignut
your shirt started this whole thread, and it's been hi-jacked. It's a good shirt and interesting thread though cheers,
M
Last edited:
Some useful tips there, Toddy, thank you so much. Managed to cut half the barrel top before my recip blade lost all the teeth but don't have huge amounts of coffee yet to make the dye
Great work, good to see these witney blankets finding another use.
Being a Witney lad i am sure i was kept warm with them blankets though winter in my childhood, I dont think my mother will let me cut up he last 2 witney blankets..
Being a Witney lad i am sure i was kept warm with them blankets though winter in my childhood, I dont think my mother will let me cut up he last 2 witney blankets..
