Indigo Dye / Dharma Trading Co

Luscious indigo color in an easy to use form! The indigo blue color has played an important role in several cultures throughout history. There are an astounding number of books that are just devoted to this one dye. The famous Blue Men of Morroco are a north African tribe who dress from head to toe in indigo dyed fabric.

Natural Indigo, and Synthetic Indigo, takes a considerable amount of effort to get it into a working dye bath. First off, it is not soluble in water. It has to be ground, pasted up, then most recipes call for reducing it chemically with Sodium Hydrosulfite or Lye (nasty stuff). It is very involved and can be time consuming.

As an alternative, try this Pre-reduced Indigo. Synthetic Indigo (chemically identical to natural Indigo) has been pre-reduced chemically, then dried, so it dissolves in water right off the bat. You still need to add Sodium Hydrosulfite or our Dharma Dyehouse Color Remover; aka Thiox; aka Thiourea Dioxide, but the nasty Lye is replaced by Soda Ash (a milder alkali). The best thing is that it only takes about 10 minutes to prepare the dye bath and you get the same unique results as with the regular Indigo. And like any indigo bath, it can be refreshed with the addition of more dye or more chemicals, and you can keep it going for a long time. This all makes it have a lower environmental impact for the dyer than taking the original natural or synthetic Indigo from start to finish with all the chemicals involved.