(Also Known As The Mystery of the Accidental Purple Or Correcting Color After Color And Learning to Live With Disappointment)
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| The finished hat as worn by François, my totally sane mannequin head. |
The Sumptuary laws were passed in 1571 to generate more profit for the domestic wool trade in England. Wool caps were mandatory for men and young boys not in the higher classes to wear on Sundays and during holidays, helping to cement the brimmed cap as an English hallmark. However, brimmed caps are not the only examples of hats made and worn during the 16th century.
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| Fig. 1: Underside view of the brimless cap found in the Museum of London's Collection |
There is a brimless cap that is part of the Museum of London's collection. Details such as where and when it was found are unknown although it is known that the hat was made in the 16th century. The hat is very reminiscent of what is considered a beret today.
The overall goal of this project was to start out dyeing yarn with locally sourced dyestuff and then create, without a pattern, a rough replica of the hat found in the Museum of London. Roughly, this project was a success. Locally sourced dyestuff was used at first and a hat was knitted up, fulled, and napped. The finished product looks like the hat found in the Museum of London, albeit a different color. However, there were a couple of changes and a bunch of mistakes made.
As the goal of this project was mainly an experiment in the author's abilities, it was decided to conserve yarn by not knitting the hat double (as can be seen in figure 1 if you were to look closely at the edge). Another run of mistakes made was in the dyeing of the yarn, however the finished result is satisfactory.
Overall Dye Conclusion (tl;dr)
An attempt was made to use locally foraged materials. The author grows woad in their garden and collected oak galls while on hikes. When the woad dye attempt failed, the author turned to the pages of Wild Color by Jenny Dean to search for an achievable color using materials they had close at hand. It required a run to Port Fiber in Portland, ME to purchase the iron powder, as the author had not at the time been soaking iron or copper to use as a mordant. When this dye attempt did not produce the desired results the author made another trip to Port Fiber choosing to use a store-bought natural dye; madder powder made by Botanical Colors.
Overall, while the finished color was a surprise, it was not a complete surprise. With the yarn previously having been dyed, or more accurately just “mordant-ed” with the oak galls and iron, it may have “saddened” the fiber enough to achieve purple. It is also possible that the first attempt at dyeing with woad made a reemergence when the madder was added. A third possibility is that when the berry flavored Tums were used to “deepen” the colors, the coloring in the Tums could have changed the yarn color.
Materials Used
• Worsted weight KnitPicks Bare (two skeins, 440 yards, 200 grams)
• Woad leaves (163 grams fresh and slightly damp)
• Washing soda (2 ½ tablespoons)
• Sodium hydrosulphite (author used metabisulphite from previous brewing experiments) (1 ½
teaspoons)
• Oak galls picked over the course of a summer (37 grams)
• Iron powder, purchase from Port Fiber (2 tablespoons)
• Vinegar (1 cup)
• Madder, purchased from Port Fiber (2 teaspoons)
• Tums (10 tablets, ground)
Woad Dye Attempt
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| Fig. 2: Woad, prior to being decimated at the hands of an overeager dyer. |
1. Soaked both skeins of Cascade 220 (undyed, probably bleached) in warm water for over two hours.
2. Prepare woad leaves by tearing or cutting into small pieces.
3. Boil water and add woad leaves to pot. Pour boiled water over the leaves and let steep for at least an hour.
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| Fig. 3: Whisking. The author cheated by using a whisk attachment on their immersion blender. A++ would recommend. |
4. Strain leaves, retaining liquid, making sure to squeeze the leaves to get the water out.
5. Add washing soda and whisk until your hands go numb and the froth changes color (see figure 3).
6. Return the liquid to heat and simmer at 50 degrees Celsius, adding the sodium metabisulphite
7. Add yarn, gently, making sure to not add air. Remove all from heat and let sit for about two hours.
8. Remove from vat and expose yarn to air to achieve woad blue.
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| Fig. 4: Results; not blue. |
Result
FAILURE. Total and utter failure of achieving any sort of blue (see figure 4). The color result was a very faded, pale green that was barely noticeable. Color was likely due to the age of the woad plant (about two years old), the earliness of picking the woad (April instead of July), and possibly not correctly following the woad dyeing process outlined in Wild Color. There is also the possibility that the sodium metabisulphite was the incorrect reducing agent to use in this dye process as Wild Color suggests the use of sodium hydrosulfite.
Oak Gall and Iron Dye Attempt
1. Soak fiber; this attempt used the two previously dyed skeins of Cascade 220 (440 yards).
2. Crush and soak oak galls in 8 liters of water for about an hour.
3. Simmer oak galls for about an hour.
4. Strain oak galls, retaining liquid. Set aside oak galls to dry; there is a possibility that they can be reused as a mordant but the author has not tried this yet.
5. Add 2 tablespoons of iron powder to the retained liquid, turning heat off.
6. Add fiber and let soak away from heat.
7. After two hours, fiber was checked for color fastness. The color began to run, so a cup of vinegar was added to the vat and the yarn allowed to sit overnight, before removing and hanging to dry.
Result
FAILURE. The goal with the oak gall and iron powder was to achieve a dark gray or black color. The results of this dye bath were close; one skein turned a silver-gray that was desirable and the other skein remained a disappointing brown, similar to what one could achieve with oak galls only. Overall, not a complete disappointment. See figure 5.
At this point it was decided to use the yarn as is to knit the hat, with the intention of over-dyeing the hat after finishing the felting and fulling.
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| Fig. 5: Knitted swatch that has been dyed with oak gall and iron. |
Madder Dye Attempt
1. Soak hat in water.
2. Make paste with madder and small amount of water.
3. Add boiling water to paste.
4. Bring dye vat of water to 32 degrees Celsius, add madder, crushed tums (or calcium carbonate),
and hat. Keep at this temperature for about thirty minutes.
5. Bring dye vat to 82 degrees Celsius for about forty minutes.
6. Remove hat from the dye vat and run under cold water until the water runs clear.
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| Fig. 6: Checking to see what color red the hat ended up; surprised not-red red. |
Result
Madder is typically used to achieve reds ranging from pale pink to scarlet. The results of this dye attempt was a surprise purple. Not the scarlet the author intended, but much more welcome than the previous two dye attempts. The author is not completely sure that the color was achieved through natural means, as in an attempt to save money they purchased the berry Tums to use for calcium carbonate instead of white Tums. Berry Tums had color in them, and while the amount used was fairly small, it is possible that there was a reaction in the dye bath that made the colors come forward.
Extra: A skein of Knit Picks Bare fingering yarn was tossed into the madder dye vat after the hat was removed in an attempt to exhaust the dye bath. Two teaspoons of lemon juice were also included for “giggles” to see what would happen when an acidic substance was added. The result was a skein of light burgundy red yarn.
Knitting the Brimless Cap
Usually one to live on the wild side of knitting by never doing gauge swatches (even that one time the author knitted a dress), the decision was made to go against nature and create a swatch. One knits a swatch by using the same needles and yarn that is intended for the finished project. Once the swatch has reached a reasonable size, a measurement is taken and the stitches and rows counted. This gives the knitter an idea of how many stitches will be needed to cast on and for how long one should knit for the project to reach a desired size. In an attempt to standardize knitting terms for the on-going research project known as KEME (Knitting in Early Modern Europe, a project that researches and attempts to recreate historic knitted hat finds), gauge is referred to by the terms “wales” and “courses”. In modern terms wales are stitches and courses are rows.
The KEME website is a wealth of information about historic hats, most of which are brimmed or double brimmed. There is very little information there, at the time of this project, on brimless caps. For the sake of simplicity the author made the decision to use the average gauge found in the KEME research of 6 wales and 9 courses per inch. A swatch was made in the style of the KEME research, one that is knitted in the round on size 5 needles, increasing by eight stitches every other row until the swatch measures five inches in diameter. Luckily, the first swatch the author created matched the average historic gauge, so it was decided to move on to developing a plan for the pattern.
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| Fig. 7: Finished swatch that has made gauge. |
With the goal of making a hat for a male with a rather large head, the author headed for a calculator and a pile of math. The head circumference goal was 24 inches. The estimated shrinkage of the finished hat after fulling and napping was about 15%. Multiplying the cast-on circumference by fifteen percent gave the author 3.6 inches to add to the total knitting, with a goal of 27.6 inches in diameter. Since the gauge was six stitches for every inch, the author multiplied the total desired width (27.6) by six, getting a total of 165.6 stitches needed to cast on.
This is an impossible number for knitting as one cannot cast-on half a stitch. As the plan was to increase the hat by eight stitches every other row and eventually decrease by eight stitches later on, the author had to find a cast-on number that was dividable by 8. Since one can make a hat smaller but never bigger, the decision was made to cast on 168 stitches.
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| Fig. 8: There's an awful lot of stockinette stitch in this project. Expect to get bored quickly if attempting on your own. |
With the math figured out, the author went ahead and began knitting (see figure 8). As the finished hat would not be knit double, the author decided to knit the edge of the hat for one inch allowing for some space later on to turn the edge inwards and sew to the hat. The goal here was to have a space to thread a ribbon to allow the hat to sit more securely on the head of the wearer. The Museum of London hat had slits in the brim that a ribbon had been threaded through.
Once the hat was completed, the author took to fulling and napping the hat. This required a surface to work on, a bowl of warm, soapy water, and a mallet. Again, the KEME research came in handy, as the author followed their directions for fulling and napping a finished swatch. Almost as tedious as the continuous stockinette stitch, the process for fulling the hat took over an hour. Soak the hat in the soapy water and agitate it by rubbing the hat against itself. Take the hat out of the water, working it on your surface like you are kneading dough. Then beat the hat with the mallet, making sure to fold and move it in between the beats. When the material has thickened and stitches can no longer be seen, move on to napping the hat.
KEME suggests napping the hat while still damp. The author napped the hat while damp and also when dry, as the initial napping did not produce the desired results. The brush used was a store-bought plastic “boar bristled” brush. To nap, the author flicked the brush in short upward motions against the fabric of the hat. This is another part of the process that took over an hour to achieve any sort of desired result, thankfully a task easily done during a long car trip or while watching television.
Result
There is still some stretch to the material and could probably stand to be fulled some more. Most importantly, though, the finished hat is not only wearable, but looks like the hat found in the Museum of London.
Works Cited
“Brimless Cap.” Museum of London, Museum of London, 27 Mar. 2019, collections.museumoflondon.org.uk/online/object/90553.html.
Dean, Jenny. Wild Color the Complete Guide to Making and Using Natural Dyes. Watson-Guptill, 2010.
“Keme Research.” Keme Research, Centre for Textile Research, kemeresearch.com/participate.
Secara, Maggie. “Elizabethan Sumptuary Statutes.” Elizabethan Sumptuary Statutes, 14 July 2001, elizabethan.org/sumptuary/.
Glossary
Courses: The count of rows per inch when creating a swatch.
Fulling: The process of felting a fabric that makes it denser.
Gauge: Knitting measurement usually in terms of stitches per inch or rows per inch. In modern patterns, a gauge is given so that the the knitter can match the pattern creator's gauge, so that one doesn't end up with a sweater for a horse. KEME Research uses wales in place of stitches and courses instead of rows to generalize knitting terms.
Madder: A plant that produces anywhere from yellow to red dye colors.
Mordant: Substance that is used to help affix the dye permanently to the fiber being dyed, usually a metallic compound like iron or copper or a plant based substance like tannin.
Napping: Raising the fiber on a fabric to give it an appearance similar to the fabric of a teddy-bear or velvet. Usually trimmed close.
Oak Gall: A reaction an oak leaf has when a wasp lays an egg on the leaf. The tree reacts by growing plant matter around the egg, producing a round hollow shell. Oak galls are a great source of tannin and can be used in ink making as well as dyeing.
Reducing Agent: Used to reduce oxygen in a woad dye vat. The agent usually contains sodium hydrosulphite which can be found in RIT color remover. The author used sodium metabisulphite which is used in brewing to stabilize cider and beer and is not the correct substance to use as a reducing agent. This is likely a reason why the woad did not take. The author intends to use the urine method to dye with woad next time, although is a little sketched out about keeping buckets of urine sitting around.
Swatch: A sample of knitting created in order to measure out gauge.
Wales: The count of stitches per inch when creating a swatch.
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