INDIGO: Dyeing with Natural Indigo Plant Dye w/Chef Scott Peacock

In this Week's' Farm Vlog, I got to spend a Sunday with my dear friend, James Beard Award Winning Chef, Scott Peacock, & his beautiful rare indigo he has been growing.

I was invited to attend his indigo dyeing event or gathering & it just amazes me everytime I get to dye with indigo. Scott had 2 huge indigo vats setup up for us to dye clothes & other fabrics & textiles in. One was a vat of fermented indigo that had to be heated to a certain temperature, & the other was a non-heated vat of indigo that was mixed with iron & each vat dyed the clothing a totally different tone or hue of blue. The fermented indigo was a more pale or lighter blue, while the vat of indigo mixed with iron was this gorgeous deep dark blue that just was so beautiful.

Now honestly I have no clue at all how the process works. Like how you get the indigo plant to become the beautiful indigo dye, but I do know it's pretty complicate, & very time consuming & really is a dying art, & thankfully we have people & artist like Chef Scott Peacock, who are learning the craft & experimenting with it & he is actually growing his own indigo plants as well. So super kudos to Scott & other artist alike.

The way Chef Scott explained me to actually dye the fabrics was to gently ease the fabric into the vat of the natural indigo dye, & very slowly & gently move the fabric back & forth in the indigo vat. And continue to do this for at least 5 minutes. After the 5 minutes is up, to ball up the fabric, while it's still submerged in the indigo dye, & then bring it out of the dye, & then go immediately to a tub of water & work the fabric really well, trying to get as much of the indigo dye out as you can, then go to another tub of water & repeat, trying to again get all of the blue indigo dye out of the fabric. Once you have done that, you then go & hang up you now dyed fabric & wait 5 minutes & the repeat the entire process over again, & you do this at least 3 times. After you are finally finished, you then submerge all your dyed fabrics into a vinegar water solution for at least and hour to neutralize it. Then hang up your newly dyed fabrics or clothing & let them air dry. You now can wash your newly indigo dyed clothing, but you want to wash it by itself for at least the 1st three washings or so.

Now this is the 2nd time I got to part of one of Scott's indigo events, & at the last one, I really did not get to do near as much dyeing & playing around with the indigo dyes as I did this time. So this time I did tried to make a few designs & patterns in the fabrics & shirts I brought with me. And the way this is achieved is by covering areas on the fabric up so the indigo cannot penetrate the fabric. So we used very primitive items like rope & clothes pins & paper clips, you would twist & tie & try to come up with some sorta pattern in your head, and then start the dyeing process. The cool & exciting part about this is, that you really do not know how it will turn out until you actually are finished dyeing & then you unravel your piece & then you finally get to see how it turns out. It is almost like unwrapping a present.

But it was such a wonderful day & really enjoyed myself & learned a lot as well.

Thank you & hope y'all have a great day!-Jason

Cog Hill Farm - 2017