Name: Marija
Message: Dear Madam,
please give me recipe how to get turquoise shade only from natural dyes. Which mordant I have to use?

The best way to obtain a turquoise color with natural dyes is by a two-step process, combining blue and yellow dyes. Equal intensities of blue and yellow would produce green, but an intense blue followed by a sufficiently pale yellow will produce turquoise.

First you should dye your fiber blue, using indigo. Indigo must be used before your yellow dye, because the mordants required for yellow dyes may interfere with level dyeing of indigo. Indigo requires no mordant at all, but the chemistry of dyeing with indigo is complex. You must produce a reducing vat in order to dye with indigo. The old traditional method was to create a fermentation vat using stale urine. More popular these days are a natural fermentation dyebath with bran, or a thiourea dioxide/lye dyebath, or a zinc/lime dye bath. If you are not already familiar with indigo dyeing, I would advise you to find a book on the subject, rather than relying on the more limited information available on the internet. Keep in mind that it is better to dip your fiber repeatedly in a relatively weak indigo dyebath, to get an intense blue, than to dip once in a very concentrated bath, as the latter often leads to big problems with crocking (rubbing off of dry dye).

There are many different natural dyes that can be used to dye yellow. Many weeds produce yellow dyes and can be used with alum, which is the safest of the mordants. Unfortunately, most yellow natural dyes tend to fade in the light. The spice turmeric can be used with no mordant at all, being a natural direct dye, but tends to fade and must be redyed every year or so, depending on light exposure. Two much more light-fast natural dyes are weld and quercitron (the latter being from the inner bark of the American black oak tree). 


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