Growing, harvesting & extracting our own Woad dye pigment to naturally colour cold process soap blue
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- Опубліковано 5 сер 2020
- Well it's something a little different for today!
Many of you who know us know that we love using homegrown ingredients where possible in our soaps. Today we are taking things one step further and trying to create our own natural dye!
Back in March 2020, we plated some Woad. Woad is a plant that is native to Britain and has been used since ancient times to create a natural blue dye, similar to Indigo.
In today's video, we will be showing you how we harvest and process homegrown Woad leaves to extract the natural blue pigment. It is a long and quite involved process, so the video is quite a long one, but we hope that it will give an insight into how natural dyes can be created.
In next weeks video, we will be using the dye that we manage to extract today to create our very own Woad dyed soap!
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Goodness, you worked so hard for that woad! Congrats on making pigment truly from seed to finish! I can't imagine most folks have the patience and skill to do such a thing, so this is really an accomplishment, if you ask me!
Thank you so much :-) It certainly was a test of patience! I can't honestly say it is something I will do regularly as it takes so much time from start to finish for such a small amount, but I just wanted to see if I could do it! Must admit, I did feel pretty proud of myself at the end!
@@TheSussexHandmadeSoapCompany As you should!!
I commend your fortitude for seeing this through to the end- I had been looking for Woad seeds myself to try to do the same but having seen this video I am now 100% happy to buy it ready made from somebody else- this accounts for the fact as to why it is so hard to find!
That's fascinating. Thank you so much for sharing this method. It's madness that so many leaves make such a tiny amount of powder. I'm off now to hopefully find the second video. ❤
Can't wait to see the blue soap you make with your homegrown woad!!
Great video! Thank you!
Neither can I! I am crossing my fingers and hoping it works and doesn't just go grey!
am hoping for a robin's egg blue
Unless it changes colour considerably in the next few days as it dries it doesn't look like it is going to be Robin's egg blue unfortunately! To be very honest, the colour it is right now has totally shocked me, but it is a very beautiful colour and certainly not anywhere near grey or dull!
Thank you so much!! I just planted my woad yesterday and this showed me what to expect in a few months. You have a new follower!!
That’s a lot of work 😵💫. Thank you for showing how much goes into making the dye from scratch.
This is exactly what I was looking for! Great video! Very well done 😁 thank you
This was a great video and I’m looking forward to the next. The process was so LONG , it makes you realize that extracting the Woad could be a full time job. Hard to accomplish lots of other things in probably a week that you would be working on this. LOL! Thank you so much. So interesting
Thank you Cathy. Yes, it did take a very long time and I can't honestly say it is something we will do very often purely because of the amount of time required and the relatively low yield! It certainly helped me to understand why Woad is such an expensive dye to purchase though!
Hard work, very grateful for ur work.
well done, great process - cant wait to see the soap you make and hopefully it works!
Thank you! We have made the Woad soap now (ready for next weeks video) and so far the colour is looking very pretty :-)
That was fascinating! But surely blue due in soap is gonna dye whatever you wash with it??
Great video, thank you! So I guess I'm not going to get a super amount of powder from my one plant then?!
What about using filter paper to collect the sediment from the original pot of liquid? You could set up a burette to drip into a funnel, sitting on top of a receptacle to catch the liquid. Place a coffee filter into the funnel. Set the stopcock of the burette for a slow drip, and make sure that the receptacle is large enough that is won't overflow. Each time the burette empties, refill the burette until you've filtered all the liquid. You should collect a much higher percentage of the available sediment in the coffee filter using this method, rather than by repeatedly removing the top portion of liquid. Although most of the woad sediment is at the bottom, you are still losing some sediment each time you discard a large portion of the water. (Otherwise, the water wouldn't be stained.) With this being such a labor intensive collection process, this might help better conserve the woad collected from each plant crop. Thoughts?
I think this is one of the most scientific sounding comments I have had on this channel - I love it! Thank you for taking the time to write out the process for me and give your thoughts. I feel a little embarrassed to say now that we probably won't be harvesting our own Woad again as it wasn't really worth it for us, but if we ever do, I know I will revisit this comment for your tips!
I don't know that its enough to infuse in oil but you could try to rehydrate it (I know even after you have dehydrated it) with some hot water and then add it to a swirl portion at trace. It will go grey first (like concrete) and fingers crossed will go Robins egg blue. I think you only have enough there for a swirl not a whole soap loaf.
Yes, we did only get a very small amount! We have used it in the lye water infusion to create a very small amount of soap (about 2 bars worth!) I'm not going to give anything away yet, but it has certainly changed to a very pretty colour - but not necessarily one I would describe as blue! Waiting for the soap to fully saponify to see what colour it ends up as!
Very interesting. Waiting to see the soap.
Thank you Nancy, the soap video will be up this Friday :-)
I wonder if it would have come easily off of parchment paper... what a process lol good work.
Hi Meaghan, the guide that I followed for the process did specifically say not to use baking/parchment paper as the woad sticks to it, so I guess that it probably wouldn't work too well.
This plant (isatis tinctoria) have also remarcable antiviral properties
I have heard that too, though I am not sure how much (if any) of the properties would last through saponification of the soap. It could be wonderful to incorporate into a cream or lotion though where the properties would be much more likely to remain.
Great video. I believe Iron Age celts used woad to paint on their faces for battles. I remember a history lesson saying they used to put the woad leaves in a big vat and pee on it to extract the pigment 😱...another experiment perhaps 😁😁. Looking forward to seeing the colour you get in your soap.
Haha, Yes, I had heard the same, but thought I would go with a more modern approach! That said, I was tempted to paint it on my face and run through the house shouting about my "freedom" :-)
The Sussex Handmade Soap Company 🤣🤣😁
Es difícil extraer el tinte!
Have you tried to make pen ink?