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For a number of years, I have grown my own madder from a plant that I bought at woolfest from fiery felts. I have tended the plants carefully and as they matured started to harvest the roots.      Here is my madder bed looking a bit weedy in the snow.

So far using these madder roots I have only been able to achieve peachy reds which I find a bit frustrating. 

I thought I’d try again. First I read up about the factors which affect the colour extraction process for madder.  I reread  “Wild Color” by Jenny Dean along with the pages about madder on the website of the wild colours company.   I also checked the history of dyeing with madder in the wonderful book “Natural Dye” by Dominique Cardon.     What a lot of options there are.    True red was the desired red colour to be obtained from madder used to dye wool. Highly sort after historically.

It is clear to me that I should first be trying to remove the brown pigments by cleaning the roots and then treating them with boiling water.  This is a step I have never done before.

First I washed my dried roots to remove soil and then dried them.   I chopped them up and rubbed them through a sieve to remove any remaining soil, small pieces, and outside skin.   Down to 62 grams now from the original 92, but it is looking red now.

I added some boiling water, whizzed with my handheld blender waited 2 minutes and drained.  Quite brown looking.  I repeated this step.  

I added a further 3 litres of cold water to the now cleaned roots and measured the ph.  About 6.  Not alkaline enough.  So I tentatively added washing soda, until the ph was 10.  I have no idea what ph I am aiming for except that it needs to be alkaline so this will have to be the starting point. Another option would have been to add chalk, but I don’t have any to add.

The mix is looking quite red.

I decided to dye silk and wool.  My wool has been mordanted with alum. I soak the silk and wool overnight in water and then added to the dye bath. I slowly brought the temperature to 70oC and held it, for 60 mins. 

The moment of truth.  After all this effort is the red a true red.

The wool on the left is the result of this experiment. Better but not what I was aiming for.

Here is scarlet fibre bought from world of wool compared with my dyeing attempt. It is obvious, but the scarlet is on the top.

I don’t think I have achieved a true red. Not anywhere near.

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I am left wondering if this is all worth it and I think I will buy some dried and ground madder root that I can use in comparison and maybe even some madder extract!