You bet! I decided to buy some washing soda per BJ's comment. It was cheap and a decent volume. I will be using soda ash all month long in my videos for July, so needed a bit more bulk 😉
Beautiful, startling pink color. Great demo. Lemon juice contains only about 0.2% citric acid by volume. Figuring 1 ml of lemon juice should weigh about 1 gram, to get about 3 grams of citric acid from lemon juice you would need about 15 ml or 15 grams of juice or a little more. And that will vary as the percentage of citric acid will also vary depending on the fruit. So it makes sense you needed so much lemon juice. Also washing soda and pool pH up chemicals are soda ash. Although it is nice to know you can make it yourself.
Many thanks to you, BJ, for the sweet words, but also for the note on the citric acid in lemon juice 💛 After I shot the video, this exact thought crossed my mind! If I add up the volume I used here, it was between 15 and 20 ml/g, so spot on your calculation. Smart woman 😊 So much experimentation, so little time! Great alternate options for buying soda ash. I've also heard that ferrous sulfate is used in pool maintenance and is a much less expensive way to buy iron for modifying/mordant. I don't have a pool, but it is fun to find other less expensive ways to access some of these dye products. I made my first batch of soda ash from scratch because I had baking powder handy - love the ability to improvise!
Such a good thought about the lemon juice, of course! Also, yes, I bought my soda ash at Walmart in the laundry section, labeled "washing soda laundry booster" (Arm and Hammer brand)
Neat! Barbie doesn’t have the copyright on hot pink. 😄 Back in October I used safflower on wool since I was out of cotton. First, I easily got some yellow with my hot water/solar dye method. Then I squeezed out the petals before reusing them to remove as much yellow as I could. I took the petals and added rubbing alcohol to extract the pink. I had heard the safflower pink dye wasn’t water soluble and since I had been dyeing with alkanet which isn’t water soluble either I had used rubbing alcohol successfully with alkanet. Long story short I ended up dyeing my wool a light peach color-a bit more pink than I got from the peach gladiolus I had dyed with in the summer. Evidently, I hadn’t exhausted all the yellow in the petals. I still have lots of safflower left to experiment with. Perhaps, if I’m patient I’ll find a way to get bright pink on wool.
You are so right 💕 Thank you for walking through all of the steps you took while working with safflower. My first attempt to find the pink a few years ago was an epic failure. I actually think I didn't follow the directions, so I really moved slowly through this one to make sure I got it right and it worked! I have not yet worked with alkanet, but it's been on my wish list. Interesting that it is not water soluble, so even more curious now 😊
I had heard name alkanet, but had never known what color it was so when I saw some dark purplish/red roots for sale as dyestuff, I was excited to try it. It colored my wool yarn purple, but the color wasn’t even. Perhaps the sunlight affected it.
Yes, I've been interested in alkanet because of the grayish purple color possibilities. I'm never too concerned about even dyeing, but I'm always looking for variation for my own work. I know it is very important for many 😊 I can imagine that light could be a factor with any purple toned color 💜
oh wow that pink is so vibrant! I absolutely love it ok Margaret just tell me what to plant 😂 update on my seeds since you gave us one.. a few what i hope are Stocks are growing and nothing in my vegetable garden has done a darn thing... so since I have grow lights now for my orchids I am going to start seeds indoors next year..
It is a total WOW pink - it truly looked like bubble gum 💕 Safflower is known to be less light fast, so depending on what you plan to do with that pink, keep that in mind 😊 If you saw my dye plants right now, you might not want my advice! We definitely live in wildly different climates, and until we have summer here (ahem!), I'm not sure what is going to thrive. Having said that, indigo is a MUST, plus I just love how my coreopsis and marigold are doing. Plant those! Grow lights are definitely the way to go. Envious of your veggies, even though they are starting slow for you. The idea of this type of garden is dreamy...but it is hard work. Hope the sun brings you some colorful (and tasty) surprises this year!
@@MargaretByrdColorQuest typo* my veggies hasn't done anything. After I planted them we got flooding rains then the heatwave soo. 🤷♀️ The lettuce I planted didn't even sprout 🤦♀️ I have those wanting for me to confirm order 🤣
@@jessicabey275 Absolutely wild weather this year...wow. Hope July will ease up so some of your veggie can at least sprout. Maybe the bounty will come in the early fall this year 😉
@@MargaretByrdColorQuest I hope something does 😅 Remember when you asked about stuff to fill pots..? Well I forgot to put some cones in my pots 🤦♀️ I just realized that last night and I put the Canna Lilies in a pot probably a week or two ago
Hi Margaret! It's me again (the student who asked you about mordants), sorry for coming back again to ask you questions. Where can I buy an alum mordant? Specifically the aluminum potassium sulfate one?
Hi Hanneul! I buy my mordants and other dye products from Botanical Colors in Seattle, Washington in the US. They have an on-line store and can ship worldwide for many products, but not all. Where are you located? There are many dye supply retailers globally, but you may also be able to buy alum in your grocery store or on-line from Amazon. APS is used for pickling, so it is more widely available.
@@MargaretByrdColorQuest I live in the Philippines so I'm guessing it might be harder for me to look some alum. But I do hope I'll be able to find one at our grocery store! Do you know what I should say to the workers there once I try to look for some alums in their store? I'm afraid that they might not understand me and misinterpret me because of the terms I used in asking
@@hanneul5767 Here in the US, we can find alum in the spice aisle. A big name brand is McCormick, so it is possible it could be more globally distributed. I would say you are going to be pickling, and hopefully, they will recognize 'alum' as the right product. Good luck!
You wondered correctly! Per BJ in the comments below, lemon juice contains only 0.2% citric acid by volume. I've always used lemon juice & vinegar to acid shift color, but I'm going to invest in some citric acid. I just used it in a discharge class I took this past week, so it definitely is worth having in the studio. I like to offer easily accessible options here on the channel so people feel encouraged to try things out from standard products they may already have in their kitchen, like lemon juice. It has it limitations though 😉
Does anyone know if you have to do the yellow dye extraction or if you can go straight to the pink? Can't find anything about it. I'm experimenting with it but was curious if anyone already has. I did half my petals in a first/ yellow extraction and then added the other/unsimmered half to them in the alkaline bath, to see if anything could be done with them. I can imagine maybe getting richer color because none of it has been used for the yellow extraction, but I can also imagine it not working at all or there being some science-y reason it had to be done with the yellow extraction steps first. I've read articles about deep orangey reds being extracted from safflower in ancient China, so I'm trying something different
Awesome question, Jasmine 🌸 I have only worked with safflower 'successfully' in this video and I definitely leeched out much of the yellow first. It sounds like you are experimenting which is the only suggestion I would have - try it out with a very small amount of petals to see if you can go straight to an alkaline bath soak with an acidic neutralizer and achieve pink or some combination of yellow/pink, ie. deep orangey red hues? Let us know how it goes!
@MargaretByrdColorQuest so I thought it was a total failure. The whole batch was still yellow after neutralizing it. So the next day I dumped it out in my compost pile and a swatch of linen came out onto the compost pile, dyed red! I don't know how it even got in the vat. But even though the vat still looked yellow and the fibers came out yellow when I dipped them in, apparently with time, the process did work and they did become red/ pink with soaking. So I scraped as many petals as I could back out of the compost to try again and have a newly neutralized bath with fibers in it, trying again. This had been my second attempt with safflower so maybe I was too quick to think it was another failure. As far as achieving red/ pink without the yellow extraction, the jury is still out. I don't believe it worked. I did half my dyestuff with a yellow extraction and half without, and they were mixed together for the red extraction. At the end of the red extraction, the first (yellow) petals looked dull and cooked and spent, but the others were still red and vibrant, so I don't believe they did anything, in the end
@@jasminehoover5359 Thank you so much for sharing more of your experimentation 🌸 I totally understand how you thought the dye had not shifted to a true pink/red. Although I could see a change as I neutralized it, it stayed more in the orange realm, so I was also wildly surprised to see the hot pink colors that attached to the fibers 💕 The initial hint I got was the dye stain on the paper towel that was pink from where the dye had spilled a bit 😊 So happy you kept going - learn by doing is always the way to figure things out and have fun along the way! I may try jumping straight to pink next time I play with safflower in my dye studio - will let you know 🤎
Absolutely possible - fermentation is a powerful process that is used in many dye techniques and I would imagine this would create an alkaline environment.
I'm experimenting with safflower at the moment. The yellow dye is simple. Its the pink dye I am finding a problem. I want to make a lip pigment,so cant use anything harmful.
I also had a tough time getting the pink the first time I tried, so don't give up 💕 Have you thought about using cochineal for a lip color (non-vegan)? The natural dyers of Chinchero in Peru use it to color their lips and it is simple to extract 😊
@@MargaretByrdColorQuest I had considered it. I use an 18th century recipe for rouge containing cochineal. If my safflower lip paint doesnt work I might give it a try.
Thank you so much Margaret for sharing this interesting video with us.
You are most welcome, Mary, and thank you for your kind words. I wish you a colorful harvest season this year 🌼
thank you for the tip for soda ash!
You bet! I decided to buy some washing soda per BJ's comment. It was cheap and a decent volume. I will be using soda ash all month long in my videos for July, so needed a bit more bulk 😉
Beautiful, startling pink color. Great demo.
Lemon juice contains only about 0.2% citric acid by volume. Figuring 1 ml of lemon juice should weigh about 1 gram, to get about 3 grams of citric acid from lemon juice you would need about 15 ml or 15 grams of juice or a little more. And that will vary as the percentage of citric acid will also vary depending on the fruit. So it makes sense you needed so much lemon juice.
Also washing soda and pool pH up chemicals are soda ash. Although it is nice to know you can make it yourself.
Many thanks to you, BJ, for the sweet words, but also for the note on the citric acid in lemon juice 💛 After I shot the video, this exact thought crossed my mind! If I add up the volume I used here, it was between 15 and 20 ml/g, so spot on your calculation. Smart woman 😊 So much experimentation, so little time!
Great alternate options for buying soda ash. I've also heard that ferrous sulfate is used in pool maintenance and is a much less expensive way to buy iron for modifying/mordant. I don't have a pool, but it is fun to find other less expensive ways to access some of these dye products. I made my first batch of soda ash from scratch because I had baking powder handy - love the ability to improvise!
Such a good thought about the lemon juice, of course! Also, yes, I bought my soda ash at Walmart in the laundry section, labeled "washing soda laundry booster" (Arm and Hammer brand)
While acidifying my second sample i mopped up some spillage and my dishcloth turned pink! Over The Moon!!!
Yay!! How exciting 💕💕💕
Neat! Barbie doesn’t have the copyright on hot pink. 😄
Back in October I used safflower on wool since I was out of cotton. First, I easily got some yellow with my hot water/solar dye method. Then I squeezed out the petals before reusing them to remove as much yellow as I could. I took the petals and added rubbing alcohol to extract the pink. I had heard the safflower pink dye wasn’t water soluble and since I had been dyeing with alkanet which isn’t water soluble either I had used rubbing alcohol successfully with alkanet. Long story short I ended up dyeing my wool a light peach color-a bit more pink than I got from the peach gladiolus I had dyed with in the summer. Evidently, I hadn’t exhausted all the yellow in the petals. I still have lots of safflower left to experiment with. Perhaps, if I’m patient I’ll find a way to get bright pink on wool.
You are so right 💕 Thank you for walking through all of the steps you took while working with safflower. My first attempt to find the pink a few years ago was an epic failure. I actually think I didn't follow the directions, so I really moved slowly through this one to make sure I got it right and it worked! I have not yet worked with alkanet, but it's been on my wish list. Interesting that it is not water soluble, so even more curious now 😊
The "red tape" used in the 'olden' days, read was from the fugative form of safflower. Also read in a book of use in Japan, sounded quite awesome.
Love the term 'olden days'...I'm pretty sure I was living back then!! Cool bit of safflower trivia about the red tape - thank you for sharing 💚
I had heard name alkanet, but had never known what color it was so when I saw some dark purplish/red roots for sale as dyestuff, I was excited to try it. It colored my wool yarn purple, but the color wasn’t even. Perhaps the sunlight affected it.
Yes, I've been interested in alkanet because of the grayish purple color possibilities. I'm never too concerned about even dyeing, but I'm always looking for variation for my own work. I know it is very important for many 😊 I can imagine that light could be a factor with any purple toned color 💜
Incredible!! Such a fun channel!
How sweet of you to say! Welcome to Color Quest 🌼
oh wow that pink is so vibrant! I absolutely love it
ok Margaret just tell me what to plant 😂
update on my seeds since you gave us one.. a few what i hope are Stocks are growing and nothing in my vegetable garden has done a darn thing... so since I have grow lights now for my orchids I am going to start seeds indoors next year..
It is a total WOW pink - it truly looked like bubble gum 💕 Safflower is known to be less light fast, so depending on what you plan to do with that pink, keep that in mind 😊
If you saw my dye plants right now, you might not want my advice! We definitely live in wildly different climates, and until we have summer here (ahem!), I'm not sure what is going to thrive. Having said that, indigo is a MUST, plus I just love how my coreopsis and marigold are doing. Plant those!
Grow lights are definitely the way to go. Envious of your veggies, even though they are starting slow for you. The idea of this type of garden is dreamy...but it is hard work. Hope the sun brings you some colorful (and tasty) surprises this year!
@@MargaretByrdColorQuest typo* my veggies hasn't done anything. After I planted them we got flooding rains then the heatwave soo. 🤷♀️
The lettuce I planted didn't even sprout 🤦♀️
I have those wanting for me to confirm order 🤣
@@jessicabey275 Absolutely wild weather this year...wow. Hope July will ease up so some of your veggie can at least sprout. Maybe the bounty will come in the early fall this year 😉
@@MargaretByrdColorQuest I hope something does 😅
Remember when you asked about stuff to fill pots..? Well I forgot to put some cones in my pots 🤦♀️ I just realized that last night and I put the Canna Lilies in a pot probably a week or two ago
@@jessicabey275 Hopefully the Canna Lilies will still love their cone-free pots! Lilies are so lovely 🌼
Hi Margaret! It's me again (the student who asked you about mordants), sorry for coming back again to ask you questions. Where can I buy an alum mordant? Specifically the aluminum potassium sulfate one?
Hi Hanneul! I buy my mordants and other dye products from Botanical Colors in Seattle, Washington in the US. They have an on-line store and can ship worldwide for many products, but not all. Where are you located? There are many dye supply retailers globally, but you may also be able to buy alum in your grocery store or on-line from Amazon. APS is used for pickling, so it is more widely available.
@@MargaretByrdColorQuest I live in the Philippines so I'm guessing it might be harder for me to look some alum. But I do hope I'll be able to find one at our grocery store! Do you know what I should say to the workers there once I try to look for some alums in their store? I'm afraid that they might not understand me and misinterpret me because of the terms I used in asking
@@hanneul5767 Here in the US, we can find alum in the spice aisle. A big name brand is McCormick, so it is possible it could be more globally distributed. I would say you are going to be pickling, and hopefully, they will recognize 'alum' as the right product. Good luck!
❤👍👍👍
Thanks for all those thumbs!
I wonder if lemon juice is lower in citric acid than the powdered form?
You wondered correctly! Per BJ in the comments below, lemon juice contains only 0.2% citric acid by volume. I've always used lemon juice & vinegar to acid shift color, but I'm going to invest in some citric acid. I just used it in a discharge class I took this past week, so it definitely is worth having in the studio. I like to offer easily accessible options here on the channel so people feel encouraged to try things out from standard products they may already have in their kitchen, like lemon juice. It has it limitations though 😉
I used white vinegar,which worked fine.
Does anyone know if you have to do the yellow dye extraction or if you can go straight to the pink? Can't find anything about it. I'm experimenting with it but was curious if anyone already has. I did half my petals in a first/ yellow extraction and then added the other/unsimmered half to them in the alkaline bath, to see if anything could be done with them. I can imagine maybe getting richer color because none of it has been used for the yellow extraction, but I can also imagine it not working at all or there being some science-y reason it had to be done with the yellow extraction steps first. I've read articles about deep orangey reds being extracted from safflower in ancient China, so I'm trying something different
Awesome question, Jasmine 🌸 I have only worked with safflower 'successfully' in this video and I definitely leeched out much of the yellow first. It sounds like you are experimenting which is the only suggestion I would have - try it out with a very small amount of petals to see if you can go straight to an alkaline bath soak with an acidic neutralizer and achieve pink or some combination of yellow/pink, ie. deep orangey red hues? Let us know how it goes!
@MargaretByrdColorQuest so I thought it was a total failure. The whole batch was still yellow after neutralizing it. So the next day I dumped it out in my compost pile and a swatch of linen came out onto the compost pile, dyed red! I don't know how it even got in the vat. But even though the vat still looked yellow and the fibers came out yellow when I dipped them in, apparently with time, the process did work and they did become red/ pink with soaking. So I scraped as many petals as I could back out of the compost to try again and have a newly neutralized bath with fibers in it, trying again. This had been my second attempt with safflower so maybe I was too quick to think it was another failure.
As far as achieving red/ pink without the yellow extraction, the jury is still out. I don't believe it worked. I did half my dyestuff with a yellow extraction and half without, and they were mixed together for the red extraction. At the end of the red extraction, the first (yellow) petals looked dull and cooked and spent, but the others were still red and vibrant, so I don't believe they did anything, in the end
@@jasminehoover5359 Thank you so much for sharing more of your experimentation 🌸 I totally understand how you thought the dye had not shifted to a true pink/red. Although I could see a change as I neutralized it, it stayed more in the orange realm, so I was also wildly surprised to see the hot pink colors that attached to the fibers 💕 The initial hint I got was the dye stain on the paper towel that was pink from where the dye had spilled a bit 😊 So happy you kept going - learn by doing is always the way to figure things out and have fun along the way! I may try jumping straight to pink next time I play with safflower in my dye studio - will let you know 🤎
Japanese dye producers let their solution ferment so maybe that is why the tea solution turned pink by itself.
Absolutely possible - fermentation is a powerful process that is used in many dye techniques and I would imagine this would create an alkaline environment.
I'm experimenting with safflower at the moment. The yellow dye is simple. Its the pink dye I am finding a problem. I want to make a lip pigment,so cant use anything harmful.
I also had a tough time getting the pink the first time I tried, so don't give up 💕 Have you thought about using cochineal for a lip color (non-vegan)? The natural dyers of Chinchero in Peru use it to color their lips and it is simple to extract 😊
@@MargaretByrdColorQuest I had considered it. I use an 18th century recipe for rouge containing cochineal. If my safflower lip paint doesnt work I might give it a try.
@@pheart2381 Best of luck with the safflower! Sounds like you are making amazing cosmetics 💕