Dyeing organic cotton in a natural fermented indigo vat

Prior to dyeing, the yarn must be taken off of the cone and twisted into hanks. This is done by hand with a swift and about 2 hours of nonstop spinning. Thanks to Lisa at the Swedish Cultural Center for loaning us her swift!  

The yarn purchased for this particular project was 50% organic and 50% EZ Dye cotton, also known as Dye-Lishus Cotton Yarn. It's your typical 10/2, ring-spun, carded cotton yarn with one twist. It doesn't take any additional mordant or treatment to bind to the dye. The concept was brought to the hand-weaving community by a woman named Eileen Hallman of New World Textiles. The EZ Dye aspect of the yarn is achieved by adding a molecule to the cotton cellulose that attracts and bonds to dye molecules. This process occurs even before the cotton has been spun into yarn. As a pre-mordanted yarn, the cotton no longer requires salt, washing soda, or other treatment chemicals. More dye is taken up by the yarn, reducing dye and chemicals in the waste water, and less rinsing is needed after dyeing. 

We contacted suppliers in Brazil, Tunisia, India, and China, and while many are making admirable advances towards sustainable denim, none were 100% clear of toxins. Most suppliers, if they used organic cotton at all, incorporated only a percentage into their final denim material. Almost all used synthetic dyes, and the extreme few who didn't, used caustic chemical agents to treat, bind, and fix the indigo dye. These chemicals ended up in the effluent wastewater and were damaging to local acquatic ecosystems. Faced with no options to help us achieve our goal, we decided to do what any logical company would do. We decided to make our own jeans. By hand. From scratch.