The Howl & Moon: Indigo & the Demanding Dyeing Process

In doing research about the Kamiyama region, we found that it's a capital for natural indigo dyeing. We were even more excited to learn that you can take workshops and even use facilities to dye your own clothes. So needless to say, I went through my closet while packing and grabbed some of my I-have-a-toddler-and-don't-wear-white clothes just for this purpose.

Yet another perk of participating in KAIR is that we were invited to an indigo factory in Tokushima City to learn about the process, talk to a master (who had the most gorgeous deep blue nails), and do some dyeing. This particular factory only lets you dye a purchased scarf, but being that I'd like the things I brought to turn out beautiful, I was happy to have had an experiment to see how the whole thing works.

So here's why anything dyed with natural indigo is outrageously expensive... (Your jeans are most likely synthetic indigo. Unless of course they cost you about $400+ and were made of Japanese-woven denim)

Indigo is a plant. It needs to be planted, grown, tended, harvested, dried, turned and finally made into a mass that is then used for dyeing. Making a vat of dye takes 10 straight days to get the fermented culture right, and it needs to be stirred every 2 hours for those 10 days. So workers take shifts all night to make sure it's been stirred and at the perfect temperature.

As with any dye, time is of the essence. But indigo cannot be made stronger by just soaking for hours or days on end. It needs stages. So it soaks for 15 minutes, and only when removed, rinsed with water and then put in the air does it oxidize and take the blue color. (It looks a kind of sienna brown. But as there are different indigo plant species, they have a varying look to the mixture, some more brownish-black, some more blue). Then, the fabric must be dried completely before re-immersion into the vat for the next stage. It usually takes about 5-7 dips to get that dark indigo color, each time rinsed, then dried, etc. (You can also re-dip without drying but the color will not go as dark as quickly.)

Since indigo is a culture, it has a life span of about 40 days. Then a new batch must be made, and the old one discarded. But since it's natural, the discharge is not toxic. However I didn't ask what they do with it as Hopper spent a great deal of time mingling with tools and sharp objects within the chaos of the work space and kept running out the door during the lecture tour. So my info is a bit truncated.

We all spent about an hour configuring our fabric with rubber bands and string. There are a myriad of techniques to get different results varying from normal tie-dye to beautiful patterned stencils to color-blocking, but there wasn't time to get into advanced moves. In the end mine just looks all hippied out. Some of the others made more experimental pursuits and got interesting results. Of course my attention was divided between wanting to make something nice and keeping Hopper from running out into the street in the sweltering heat. So I just kept giving him things to eat and his beloved passies (speen/pacifier).

We had to wait over a week to get them back, the results at bottom.

PS. I guess it should come as no surprise being that it's a plant, but people around here bake with it! We've had a few different cakes and cookies and after having them a few times I've been able to come up with a description of the flavor: it tastes like the smell of a wild flower field that's been cooking all day in the sun after a good rain. (planty, herby, with a slight damp decay) That's the best I can do.