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Can I use pigments to mark fabrics permanently? I don’t know ……

But, a few weeks ago I watched an interview with the textile artist Clare Benn where she talked about moving away from using acrylic paint on her textile art and using pigments for environmental reasons. She used soy milk to attach pigments to the fabric. I also came across soy milk as a binder at a workshop with Jorie Johnson She used soy milk to attach Sumi ink to fabrics and then felted them. Recently I joined the No rules textile society led by Jayne Emmerson. Every month there is a different textile-related prompt to explore. This month was paint and ink. These three stimuli made me curious to investigate what was possible with pigments on fabric.

Of course, I had some pigments, I have had them so long I can’t even remember when I bought them. So why not try them out on some fabrics. And add in some Sumi ink for good measure, oh and may some stitching as well!

The fabrics I am using are Coarse Linen, a silk hemp mix, and some smooth cotton along with some handmade paper.

The first step is to make the soy milk. Soak the beans, then pulverise them in a hand blender and strain.

I used ‘The Art and Science of Natural Dyes’ by Joy Boutrup and Catherine Ellis for my recipes. The fabrics were soaked in soy milk and I painted one side of the paper with the milk. I understand that the enzymes that allow the binding of the pigments are active for a week or so, so I felt I had to work quite quickly.

The pigments need to be mixed with soy milk to turn them into a paint/ paste. I took a teaspoon of each pigment in turn mixed it well with a small amount of soy milk and painted actually daubed it on my samples. I was so excited I forgot to take any photos as I went along.

The Results

Quite a diverse selection, but what to do next. Machine stitch, hand stitch and Sumi ink in that order. but I restricted myself to stitching with black and white threads. A total of 20 samples.

What fun pigments are!

My favourite paper samples followed by my favourites on cotton fabric

In total this is all of my samples. Some good , some not so good.

I am excited by my results. In a few days, I will test the permanency of the colour of the samples by doing some gentle test washing and I think that will be nerve-racking. And then there is the question of the Sumi ink . do I need to steam the samples to make it permanent? As is often the case, lots more questions to answer.