Mimosa Hostilis Root Bark Powder
Botanical use only
$37.501/4 lb
Fine particles do not settle and decanting will not separate them. Hold the material in a mesh bag from the start, or pour the bath through doubled muslin into a second pot. Filter warm, never boiling, and keep the last inch of the pot for the compost rather than the fibre.
Editorial desk · Written and checked in house · Updated
Straining is the part of powder dyeing nobody photographs, and it is the part that decides whether a finished skein reads as dyed or as dirty.
Coarse fragments sink, so with shredded bark a slotted spoon and a steady hand are enough. Fine particles behave differently: they stay in suspension, a good proportion of them float, and tipping the pot moves them along with the liquid. Careful pouring separates almost nothing.
The bag, from the start. Put the material into a fine mesh bag before it ever meets the water, tie it loosely enough that water moves through freely, and lift the whole thing out when the bath is loaded. Nothing to strain afterwards, and the material can be kept for a second bath.
Doubled muslin, afterwards. Stretch two layers over a second pot, secure them, and pour slowly. Doubled matters: a single layer passes enough fine material to speck a skein.
If fine material has already dried into a skein, the honest answer is that most of it stays. A gentle wash with pH-neutral detergent and a lot of moving water lifts some. Iron over the top, deliberately, will darken the whole piece enough that the specks stop reading as a fault.
Better is to avoid it: use the bag, or use shredded bark for anything you cannot rinse hard afterwards, such as a finished garment or leather.
Everything described here is raw botanical material sold for dyeing, soap making and craft work. It is not food, it is not a supplement, and it is not for human consumption. Nothing on this page is a recommendation to put any of it in or on a body.
Overdyeing is dyeing one color on top of another. Mimosa hostilis gives rose to plum, so over indigo blue it makes violet and deep purple, over a yellow dye it makes peach, coral and rust, and with iron it turns grey and slate. Dye small samples first, and change only one thing between them.
Sassafras root bark gives warm tan, rose-tan and orange-brown on wool mordanted with alum, and grey-brown with an iron afterbath. Use about a pound of bark to a pound of dry wool. Soak the bark overnight, simmer it gently for an hour, strain, then hold the mordanted wool in the bath just under a simmer for an hour and let it cool there.
Hard water carries calcium and magnesium and usually runs alkaline, and both shift a tannin dye. With Mimosa hostilis the purples drift toward brown and the color looks duller. Iron in well water greys it further. Rainwater or distilled water is the simplest answer; a little white vinegar or citric acid, to bring the bath to about pH 5 or 6, is the next best.
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