4. BioChromes

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Research

Explorations

Biochromes are colors chemically formed microscopic, natural pigments. They are a coloring matter that can be extracted from a plant or animal. Biochromes are locally positive, biobased, and produce zero waste. Natural dyes only work on natural fibers. Types of bio-based fibers include vegetal, ceullulose fibers, (cotton and linen), animal, protein fibers, (silk and wool), man made (viscose), and chemically recycled. With treatment and mordanting, they can be used with biochromes. Some sources include: insects, seeds, fruits, leaves, flowers, bark, roots, berries, mushrooms, clay, soils, and bacteria. From biochromes you can form inks, dyes, and pigments.

Throughout this week we are working with silk, viscose, cotton, and linen.

Tools Needed

• Pots
• Measuring cups
• Spoons
• Scale
• Bowls
• Containers

Sources Used

• Purple Cabbage, Avocado pits, Turmeric
• Onion peels, Spinach, Carrot greens
• Beetroot, Indigo, Pomegranate
• Black Beans, Cochineal

The captions to the pictures are in the order above.

Dyes

Dyes are colored substanced that chemically bond to the subtrate to which they are applied. Below are the steps to scour, mordant, and dye the fabrics.

TERM	DEFINITION
Scour	cleaning the fibers, removing waxes & oils present in them. It is mainly done on processed cellulose fibers. (viscose, cotton, and linen).
Mordant	substance, alum or iron, which can be used in water alone or combined with a dye bath to enhance the fastening proces of the dye onto organic fibers.
WOF	Woight of fabric, checking the wight of tho fabric while it is still dry before any other process.
Alum	a mineral found in nature in both pure and impure forms. It is a mineral salt. An alum is a type of chemical compound, usually a hydrated double sulfate salt of aluminium. We use alum to mordant the fabrics to help brighten the colors.
Iron	can be made at home with water, vinegar, and rusty nails. Used for mordanting and for modifying colors.

Step 1: Weighing

Weigh each type of fabric on its own and note them down. We first cut the fabrics into squares of 15 x 15 cm and then weighed them.

The weights we recorded are: Silk: 46.4 g Viscose: 115.9 g Cotton: 265.5 g Linen: 327.2 g

Step 2: Scouring

As scouring is only done to the plant fibers, we calculated the viscose, cotton, and linen and added 2% of the sum of their weights of soda carbonate in a pot of water. Total weights = 708.6 g 2% of 708.6 = 14.172 g We placed the fabrics into the water+soda carboante mix and let it simmer for an hour. After scouring them, we rinsed them and clustered one of each material and rolled them as 'burritos' to aid with the mordanting and dyeing processes to come.

Step 3: Mordanting

As a group, we decided to mordant the fabrics and not the dye baths so we split the 'burritos' into two piles. We mordanted one pile with Alum and the other with Iron. To calculate the mordants needed we recalculated the total weights (with the silk) and then divided it into two.

Amounts Iron: 1% of WOF Alum: 15% of WOF

Calculations Total WOF = 825 g Each pile = 412.5 g Iron = 1% of 412.5 = 4.125 g Alum = 15% of 412.5 = 62 g

We added the 'burritos' into the preheated mordanted pots and let them simmer for a while.

Step 4: Dye Baths

While the fabrics were being prepped we began with prepping the sources for the dye baths.

Hot Bath * Onion Peels (stable) * Avocado Pits (somewhat stable) * Carrot Greens (fugitive) * Spinach * Pomegranate Skin * Beetroot (fugitive) * Cochineal (stable) * Purple Cabbage (fugitive) * Turmeric (fugitive) * Indigo (stable) For the hot baths, we chopped the sources and placed them in pots on medium heat and let them simmer for a few hours. Make sure not to let it boil.

Cold Bath * Black Beans (fugitive) For the cold bath, pour the beans in lukewarm water and let them sit overnight.

Once the dye baths have simmered for a few hours, we strained them and separated each dye into two dye baths. (One for the iron mordanted fabrics and the other for the alum mordanted fabrics)

While waiting for the dye baths to finish simmering, we tested some of them in petri dishes with different modifiers. The modifiers are alum, baking soda, vinegar, and iron.

Once the fabrics and dye baths were ready, we began dyeing the fabrics. We let them sit in the dye bath for 15 minutes and 30 minutes to test if there are any differences in the colors. Once we took them out of the dye bath, we rinsed them and placed them on a drying rack with their labels to dry.

onion dye bath with iron and alum mordanted fabrics

Pantone color palette NATURAL DYES

Digital BioPantone by researchers from FAB LAB BCN 2023/24

INGREDIENTS - Natural dyeing

Miro Board Documentation

PIGMENTS

Pigments are substances or powders that can be produced from the leftover dye mixed with a metal & alkali. They can be used as is or can be mixed with acid, water, and heat to become liquid dye once again. For every 400-500 g of dye bath, we added 6 g of baking soda mixed in 100 g of hot water and 18 g of alum mixed in 100 g of hot water. Alum is used to create the chemical reaction to solidify the color and the bakind soda is used to netralize the pH. Once these are mixed together with the dye bath, they will create a chemical reaction that causes the liquid to solidify. The solidfied parts are the pigment and they will sink to the bottom. Once they have fully sunk, they can be filtered and dehydrated to turn into powder.

How to Make Pigments

Once you measure out 400-500 g of the dye bath, place it in a a cylindrical container inside a bowl to contain any spill. Then heat water and separately mix the 6 g of baking soda with 100 g of hot water and the 18 g of alum with 100 g of hot water. Make sure to continuously stir the alum or it will begin to crystallize.

Firstly, pour the alum into the dye bath and continue to stir. Then slowly, pour in the bakind soda. If poured too quickly, the foam will pop out of the container!

We experimented with many different mixtures from the cabbage, black beans, avocado, and onion.

• At the end of the process, the pigments were allowed to dry at room temperature. They were dry in two days.

Pigment Recipes

Black Beans + Alum + Baking Soda

Onion + Alum + Baking Soda

Carrot + Alum + Baking Soda

Cabbage + Alum + Baking Soda + Vinegar

Cabbage + Alum + Baking Soda

Cabbage + Alum + Baking Soda + Baking Soda

Cabbage + Alum + Baking Soda + Vinegar

FINAL RESULTS

INKS

Inks are dense liquids that contain soluble biochromes and disperse pigments in a medium. They can be made to be absorbed by the material or stay on the material. To make inks you need a vehicle, binder, and additive. A vehicle is the liquid in which the pigment is suspended. Binder is the substance that acts as a glue between the dye substance and vehicle. The additive helps stabilise, preserve, and stabilise the ink.

We used water as a vehicle, arabic and guar gums as binders, and to preserve the ink we would need to use thyme oil.

How to Make Inks

For the inks, we used Arabic Gum and Guar Gum for different consistencies and purposes. The Arabic gum is more liquid and is better for painting or inking while the Guar gum is thicker and denser and can be used for block printing or screen printing.

To make the inks we measured out 150 ml of the dye bath and placed in a glass container separately. Then we measured 50 ml of water and mixed in the gum slowly while mixing thoroughly. We started with 3.5 g and increased depending on the desired consistency.

We experimented with black beans, beetroot, and cabbage.

Physical BioPantone

We wanted a physical biopantone that is clear, tactile, and can be portable as well. We were inspired by the microscope slides and press fit lasercutting design.

First Iteration

Final Renderings

Final display

Field trip - Visit of SUPPLIER OF ORGANIC COTTON FABRICS AND GARMENTS

They offer 100% naturally colorful organic cotton. Their cultivation is carried out through regenerative agriculture practices. Three tones that are born from the seed; ecru, green and brown.

Santi Mallorqui Gou, CEO of OCC, toured us around the shop and explained their manifesto and their business model.

The cultivation is carried out through regenerative agricultural practices where crops of up to five foods coesxist with organic cotton to generate natural nutrition of the soil. They make the cotton available to designers and brands in any form that is needed. They also keep it pure by ensuring no chemicals in the processing of the cotton.

Learn more about OCC here

Recipes / files

Miro Board Documentation

Natural Dyes

Biochromes are colors chemically formed microscopic, natural pigments. They are a coloring matter that can be extracted from a plant or animal. Biochromes are locally positive, biobased, and produce zero waste. Natural dyes only work on natural fibers. Types of bio-based fibers include vegetal, ceullulose fibers, (cotton and linen), animal, protein fibers, (silk and wool), man made (viscose), and chemically recycled. With treatment and mordanting, they can be used with biochromes. Some sources include: insects, seeds, fruits, leaves, flowers, bark, roots, berries, mushrooms, clay, soils, and bacteria. From biochromes you can form inks, dyes, and pigments.

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Pokeweed Berries

"Durig my hike close to Arenys de Mar at the weekend I found some pokeweed berries on the way. I found a this super interesting recepie from Aimee LaFon which I really wanted to try out. So i forraged some of the berrys and give it a try"

• Two images side-by-side

weekly assignment

Check out the weekly assignment here

Recepies and inspirations

The links will give you some general inspirations aboou dyeing with natural dyes and show some experiences and recepies for Pokeweed dyeing.

• Digital Biopantone
• Documentation about creating the Biopantone from Barbara Fab Lab Barcelona 2023
• Pokeweed trial by Amanda Javis
• Pokeweed natural Dye recipy
• Wool dyeing with Pokeberries
• More information about Pokeweed

About Pokeweed

Pokeweed (Phytolacca americana) is a poisonous, herbaceous perennial plant in the pokeweed family Phytolaccaceae.

Appearence

This pokeweed grows 1 to 3 metres.It has simple leaves on green to red or purplish stems and a large white taproot. The flowers are green to white, followed by berries which ripen through red to purple to almost black which are a food source for birds and non-avian animals.

Origin

Pokeweed is native to eastern North America, the Midwest, and the South, with more scattered populations in the far West where it was introduced.It is also naturalized in parts of Europe and Asia. It is considered a pest species by farmers. In the wild, it is easily found growing in pastures, recently cleared areas, and woodland openings, edge habitats such as along fencerows, and in wastelands.

Use

• traditional medicine
• natural product
• biomedical research
• ink making

Pokeweed is poisonous to humans, dogs, and livestock.

*source Wikipedia

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Dyeing Process

Dyes are colored substanced that chemically bond to the subtrate to which they are applied.

In the following table you can find some usefull terms with there explanation:

TERM	DEFINITION
Scour	cleaning the fibers, removing waxes & oils present in them. It is mainly done on processed cellulose fibers. (viscose, cotton, and linen).
Mordant	substance, alum or iron, which can be used in water alone or combined with a dye bath to enhance the fastening proces of the dye onto organic fibers.
WOF	Woight of fabric, checking the wight of tho fabric while it is still dry before any other process.
Alum	a mineral found in nature in both pure and impure forms. It is a mineral salt. An alum is a type of chemical compound, usually a hydrated double sulfate salt of aluminium. We use alum to mordant the fabrics to help brighten the colors.
Iron	can be made at home with water, vinegar, and rusty nails. Used for mordanting and for modifying colors.

*source Barbara Rakovská

Tools needed

• Pots
• Measuring cups
• Spoons
• Scale
• Bowls
• Containers

Chemicals needed

• Water
• Vinegar
• Allum
• Iron

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Process and workflow

Step 1: Prepare the fibres

Chose fabric

The first step of dyeing with natural dyes is to prepare the fabrics. I decided to try out the dye on different fabrics, so I cutted some pieces of silk, cotton, viscose, linen and also used a bit of wool

weight fibres

For postprcessing its important to weight the fibres sorted by fabric type!

Scouring

Scouring is only important for plantbased fibres. It will open up the fibre structure so that the dye can stick better to the fabric.

To do so calculate the weight of viscose, cotton, and linen and add 2% of the sum of their weights of soda carbonate in a pot of water. Placed the fabrics into the water+soda carboante mix and let it simmer for an hour.

After scouring, rinse them and cluster one of each material. Roll them as 'burritos' to aid with the mordanting and dyeing processes to come.

Bacteria Dye

preparing the medium and wake up solution

Bacteria Nutrition Agar

• 200 ml destilled water
• 4 gr nutrient Agar
• 1 ml glycerin amount for 4 petri dishes

LB Broth

• 250 ml destilled water
• 6,75 gr LB Broth
• 1 ml glycerin amount for 4 Reagenzgläser

• Mix the solutions together in two seperated air proove bottles.
• Sterealize both liquids with pressure cooker
  • Therefor put bottles into special plastic bag (material that is not melting by high temperature)the lid of the bottles must be loose and both bottles need to stick inside safe and well, close plastic bag by twisting it, make sure there is a bit water at bottom of pressure cooker
  • pressure cook it for 30 min, Modus CARNE
  • afterwards lift tap of pressure cooker slowly (remove hot aur first by opening ventil with stick)
• close lid of bottles fast and firmly

wake up bacteria

tools

• incubator
• camping cooker
• gas for camping cooker
• lighter
• 4 sterilized tubes with lid
• 4 sterilized petri dishes
• 1 sterealized syrringe
• gloths
• face mask
• incubate stick/ fire proove stick
• ethanol
• frozen bacteria strings (2)
• LB Broth
• Agar Medium

• Preheat Agar Medium if it already jellyfied
• sterilize workspace by pouring alcohol in 20 cm radius around camping cooker, Light up camping cooker --> alcohol will vapourize and create steril environment, sterilize your glothes with alcohol

• sterilize incubat stick by holding it into the flame
• Open up LB Broth and sterilize it by holding opening close to fire --> will burn oxigen and contamination inside
• Fill up syrringe and pull around 5ml into one of the tubes. Try to dont touch the tube. Close lid. repead for all four tubes
• sterealize incubate stick by holding it into flame of camping cooker --> will burn away contamination, let it cool for some seconds
• open bottles with frozen bacteria strings, touch bacteria glycerol solution with incubate stick (don't touch the walls of the bottle)
• put stick into on of prepared tubes, close it
• hold stick again into flame to kill bacteria on it
• repeat with second tube (at least two samples per bacteria string to increase the growing possibilities --> we had 2 different strings therefore 4 samples)

• mark samples with Date, what string they are from and sample number
• store frozen bacteria back in the fridge and samples in the incubator at 30°C

• Open up Agar Medium and sterilize it by holding bottle opening close to fire
• open one petri dish a tiny bit and pour agar medium inside
• repeat for other petri dishes (on per sample)
• let it cool down and place it at the incubator (25°C)

tips against contamination

• The lids should be in your hand not touching the ground again (could be contaminated)
• try to always close the tubes/ bottles
• sterealize air in bottles by holding it close to the flame

Ingredients & Recipes

Prepare this recipe ¹ by collecting the ingredients necessary, to be found in the list below:

ingredients

• xxx gr madder root
• xxx gr alum
• xxx gr fabric
• xxx ml xxx
• xxx gr xxx

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum."

Blue sky

recipe mallow dye on protein and cellulose fibers

• measure
• add
• simmer
• mix
• remove
• strain
• repeat

Documenting experiments

example from the documentation of Petra Garaiová FabTextiles Barcelona 2021-22

TEST 01 - SILK

Material name	Fabric composition	Breathability	Moisture-wicking abilities	Heat retention abilities	Stretchability	Washing temperatures
Silk	Animal fibers - silkworm insect	Highly breathable	High	Low	Low	Cool or warm

RESULTS

Two ways of showcasing and comparing results with images below

On the left an image of a sample made by xxx with xxx. The dye is more xxx. On the right, an image of a sample made by xxx with xxx and xxx. Here the dye is more xxx.

RESULTS

Recycling the dye into pigments

Ingredients & Recipes

Prepare this recipe ¹ by collecting the ingredients necessary, to be found in the list below:

ingredients

• xxx gr madder root
• xxx gr alum
• xxx gr fabric
• xxx ml xxx
• xxx gr xxx

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum."

pink pigment

pigment from left-over dye bath

• measure
• add
• simmer
• mix
• remove
• strain
• repeat

RESULTS

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Recipes

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1. recipe: banana indigo ↩↩

2. recipe: mallow sky blue ↩

3. recipe: bacterial dreams ↩