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Using Sorghum extract

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Wild Colours natural dyes > natural dye extracts > using sorghum extract

Dyeing with Sorghum Extract

  1. What is Sorghum?
     
  2. What colours does Sorghum extract produce?
     
  3. How do I use Sorghum extract?
     
  4. BFL superwash wool dyed with Sorghum natural dye extract

    BFL wool dyed with Sorghum natural dye extract

    How much wool does Sorghum extract dye?
     
  5. What is Sorghum dye extract?

1) What is Sorghum?
Sorghum is a grain of the grass family used worldwide as a staple food. The non-edible cultivar that has most dye potential has rusty red marks on leaf bracts and blades.

Sorghum is not well known as a dye plant in Europe but it is used in Africa to dye leather for shoes as well as reeds and grasses for making mats.

2) What colours does Sorghum extract produce?
Sorghum extract produces dark and light mauves, or rusty shades similar to madder.

3) How do I use Sorghum extract?
Wash and mordant the wool (follow Scouring the wool and Mordanting with alum for details).

First make a paste with 1 teaspoon (5 grams) sorghum extract and a small amount of warm water. Fill a saucepan with water and add the sorghum extract paste.

Add your pre-wetted mordanted fibre. Bring the dye bath to a gentle simmer and then keep at that temperature for 45 to 60 minutes. Sorghum extract tends to settle in the bottom of saucepan and needs stirring from time to time. Leave overnight to cool.

4) How much wool does Sorghum extract dye?
10 grams of Sorghum extract will dye one 100 gram hank of Blue-faced Leicester superwash wool mauve and another pale mauve. Colours vary with fibre and water.

5) What is Sorghum dye extract?
Our Sorghum extract is shipped as a dry dark mauve crystalline powder that is very stable and of good colour fastness. It is produced using processes that respect the environment and comply with organic textile certifications. Our Sorghum dye extract is an approved dyestuff for the Global Organic Textile Standard (GOTS 4.0) and is of consistent high quality through certified cultivation of a pure plant (Europam: the European certification for medicinal herbs) and a high level of process control during production.

Learn more about dyeing with natural dye extracts:

acacia extract

brazilwood extract

buckthorn extract

chlorophyllin extract

cochineal extract

coreopsis extract

cutch extract

fustic extract

gallnut extract

goldenrod extract

greenweed extract

lac extract

logwood extract

madder extract

myrobalan extract

persian berry extract

quebracho extract

sorghum extract

weld extract

 

ALL natural dye extracts


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Wild Colours natural dyes, Studio 319, Scott House, The Custard Factory, Gibb St, Birmingham B9 4DT, UK

 
Contact Teresinha for enquiries
Tel:    +44 (0)7979 770865
email: info@wildcolours.co.uk

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Updated on 22 June 2024
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