#conservingfabrics

Mordants and Dyes, How They Age

This is a quilt and a bit of info on how an iron mordant, a chemical that makes a dye stick to a fabric, can make the fabric itself disintegrate with time. I learned about this at the Monroe County History Center in Bloomington, IN. The woman doing the work of conservation is Coley Gillespie who has a degree in fine arts and is a fiber artists. From what I have read, all dyes need mordants, even dyes made from flowers and such, the question is what kind and what properties they have in the long run.

Of course, the quilt is about 100 years old, so it is kind of amazing it is here at all.

For more on the center, go here: https://monroehistory.org