Natural Dyes Logwood

By Paivi Suomi on June 2, 2012

Logwood Natural Dye
Haematoxylum campechianum
Logwood comes from a tree native to the West Indies and the Yucatan Peninsula. The heartwood yields a dye that gives pinks, blues, purples and greens depending on the mordants.

Paivatar - Logwood Natural Dye — Paivatar – Logwood Natural Dye

Time Required:
12 hours

Use clean, premordanted wool or yarn.
Measure the Logwood chips or sawdust (25% – 50% WOG) into a nylon stocking and into small dish.
Add a bit of alcohol or vodka to the Logwood chips and allow to sit overnight. The alcohol helps to extract the colour from the logwood bark
The dyebath should be purplish-red. If it is brown, add washing soda, a teaspoon at a time, until the dyebath turns purple-red.
Pour the stocking and the water into dyepot filled with hot water and simmer for 1 hour.
Add premordanted fibre or yarn into the dyepot and simmer for 1 hour.
Allow the dyepot to cool.Remove the fibre or yarn from the dyepot, rinse and let dry.
Remove the fibre or yarn from the dyepot, rinse and let dry.

Tips:

Try alum or tin premordants.
You can reuse the exhaust dyebaths to create other colours.
Try overdyeing with Osage Orange for greens, or with Saxon blue Indigo for dark blues.