The first thing you need to do, is to gather your natural plant parts that you will be using for dyeing. We used talisay leaves, coconut husks, mahogany tree bark, annatto seeds and turmeric. Now, if you think it's easy to chop these parts into smaller pieces, you're in for not a happy surprise.
I was kinda waiting for Adela to say to put these plant parts into a machine that chops it to bits but instead she handed us bolos ( big knives) and a chopping board. The talisay leaves we cut up into small bits. Remember, the plant and tree parts you will be using for dyeing need to be freshly cut. That means if you are dyeing 500 grams of natural materials in talisay leaves, you will need to pick 2.5 kilos of talisay leaves. That's allot of leaves!
Tree bark has a longer shelf life than that of the talisay leaves, which is only 3 days. You can keep the tree bark for a longer period of time, but the longer it has been since taken from the trees, the less it's strength of color. The smaller the parts are chopped or cut, the better. Yellow ginger needed to be ground and mashed.
For the talisay leaves, you will need to be steeped overnight in water, after they had been washed and cut.
There are machines that do chop the plant parts up. They are expensive but they DO exist.
Before you are ready to dye, you need to prepare your indigenous materials that you will be dyeing, by mixing them with a fixing agent. This process is called Mordanting. The use of mordants such as copper sulfate, ferrous sulfate, or alum, improves the colorfastness, and enhances the color shades. Copper sulfate is used for medium colors; ferrous sulfate for grey and black colors; and alum, for light and pastel colors.
It appears that alum is the only one that is natural. According to PTRI, this process passes the requirements for being naturally dyed, because the amounts are slight. I preferred to only use alum, although in order to make the talisay leaves have an almost black dye, ferrous sulfate is added. I asked if they had any substitutes for the other two fixatives, but the researchers have not come up with a substitute that has been fully tested. I'll keep looking, and post if I find anything that can be used in their place.
You can use the liquid ratio of 1:30 for the indigenous materials to the volume of water. Mordant used is 5% of the weight of the material. Boil the materials in the water for around 30 minutes. Stir frequently. Drain and set aside.
The natural dyes (talisay leaves, coconut husk, mahogany bark, annatto seeds, or turmeric) are boiled separately, in 100 degrees C water for 1 hour using a liquid ratio of 1:30. Then it is filtered and set aside. The picture shows the annatto seeds being filtered from the liquid. We used a medium weave cloth to filter the seeds and tree bark.
We soaked the mordanted materials in the filtered dye extract. This is then boiled for 30 minutes. Then it is drained, washed in water, and hung up to dry.