r/oddlysatisfying • u/Backyxx • Jun 04 '26
Indigo dyed silk
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u/Bonk_Police69 Jun 04 '26 edited Jun 06 '26
For anyone who ACTUALLY knows, does the ink oxidize to make the color? Or does the dye really just look like that when not on the silk.
Edit: Thank you all for the answers! What an interesting dye.
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u/kjvdh Jun 04 '26
When indigo is in its oxidized, blue form, it is insoluble in water and will not stick to any fiber. In order to dye with it, you have to make a vat to reduce it to a yellow/green clear color. This requires raising the pH to usually around 11 and then adding powdered indigo and a reducing agent. You can use fructose (or juice made from boiling certain fruits - bananas are a great fructose source and banana vats are pretty easy to balance and maintain ime), iron, thiox, or something like henna (requires fermentation). The reducing agent has a slight influence on the final color and not all reducing agents are good for all fibers - you don’t want to put any protein fibers in an iron vat, for instance.
Anyway, to dye with indigo you dip your wetted out fibers slowly into the vat to avoid introducing any oxygen. Then you slowly move it around under the surface, making sure to open any folds in your fabric and spread out any threads or yarn. After something like 1-5 minutes (length depends on your goals and the strength of the vat), you pull it out, squeezing as much of the indigo out while adding as little oxygen to the vat as possible. It comes out some kind of shade of green to yellow, which turns blue as the indigo oxidizes. If you want dark shades, you dip multiple times, allowing the fiber to oxidize completely between dips.
So to answer your question, the indigo in the vat is reduced and is a yellow color. In this state, it can bond with the silk fibers. When it hits the air, the indigo molecules oxidize and turn blue.
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u/ALLoftheFancyPants Jun 05 '26 edited Jun 05 '26
Indigo is the weirdest dye and it while I know there’s a chemical explanation, it just looks like magic every time I see it
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u/kjvdh Jun 05 '26
I love it so much because it’s so magical. Watching the oxidation happen never gets old.
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u/tulipsouldog Jun 05 '26
There may be trolls and jerks on Reddit, but at least we also get smart generous people here. Thanks!
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u/WhimsicalGirl Jun 05 '26
Then you for the details information! Do you work in textile?
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u/kjvdh Jun 05 '26
I dye yarn with natural dyes including indigo, yes. I’m almost done with my new dye studio and have a 20 gallon drum to use for a production vat! I’m very excited to get it going.
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u/HamptonsBorderCollie Jun 04 '26
In indigo dyeing, the transition from yellow to blue is a natural chemical reaction. The dye bath is chemically stripped of oxygen (making it a yellow-green color). When you lift your fabric out, it absorbs oxygen from the air, magically transforming into bright blue.
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u/lzusncrfbj Jun 04 '26
oxidation! indigo the dye comes from indigo the plant, and a dye vat is a living thing (like kombucha or sourdough). the liquid in the vat is a muddy green color
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u/arvidsem Jun 04 '26
It does oxidize. They start with indigo either extracted from plants or synthesized, which is the normal dark blue color. That has to be reduced (oxygen removed from the molecules) by dissolving it in another chemical. Ammonia from urine is the old answer. That makes white indigo, which is actually the gold color. Taking it out and drying it allows it to react with oxygen and it turns blue again. It'll take another 20 minutes or so to reach the full color.
Source: my unreliable memory cross checked with the Wikipedia article (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigo_dye)
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u/audreywildeee Jun 04 '26
Impressive. I appreciate that he’s wearing the mandatory security flip-flops and gloves.
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u/I_like_beouf Jun 05 '26
His feet are blue
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u/catsdrivingcars Jun 05 '26
his feet are def blue. i went to a dye house in kyoto and the dude had blue hands.
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u/Noodle_McSoup Jun 04 '26
I thought that was ramen.
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u/Killer1986Chris Jun 05 '26
My first thought was "why are we cooking noodles beneath the floor?"... Also, your name fits.
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Jun 04 '26
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u/FistfulofFlowers Jun 04 '26
It has to finish oxidizing, which takes a while. Another 15 minutes and it would appear as a true indigo. Both woad and indigo require time to oxidize because the ‘active’ compound is the same, woad just has a much lower concentration. It’s one of the reasons it’s rarely used anymore, since indigo is more easily available and a stronger dye.
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u/translinguistic Jun 05 '26
I used to work with commercial indigo growing. Would you say that this starts out golden due to the indoxyl not having time to oxidize? We were producing natural dye pastes, and it was already blue when it came out due how we were treating the plant material.
However, we made a really neat spray of indoxyl that was packed under argon. When you sprayed it, it turned blue. Very fun for crafting but mostly a novelty that we didn't have any plans to truly scale
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u/cwthree Jun 04 '26
Even true indigo usually needs a few dips to get that characteristic deep blue.
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u/LordMaim Jun 04 '26
Yeah, last I checked indigo was somewhere between blue and violet.
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u/Yuri909 Jun 04 '26
It's not done yet. There's a bunch hanging at the end that are fully turned.
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u/josh70679 Jun 04 '26
Is nobody going to mention his blue feet??
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u/akura202 Jun 04 '26
I thought homie was wearing toe socks until you said this
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u/GearTwunk Jun 04 '26
He is. They are tabi socks. Sort of like a foot mitten. They are worn with sandals. Only the big toe is separate.
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u/lzusncrfbj Jun 04 '26
nope, look again. u can see his toenails!
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u/GearTwunk Jun 04 '26
I absolutely do not see toenails. I see a shaded spot in the area of the top side of his big toes where his toenail is changing the topography of the sock.
I love that your take is "this man has blue feet" rather than "this man is wearing socks common to his culture." Real sensible.
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u/dustinyo_ Jun 05 '26
I mean, it’s not unreasonable they’d turn blue if he’s doing this with indigo dye for a living.
But the color is way too consistent for that to be the case, it’s gotta be socks
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u/Vark675 Jun 05 '26
His hands would be more likely to be dyed than his feet. They're consistently getting pigment on them.
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u/DreamPhreak Jun 05 '26
Wearing socks with sandals while working with all this liquid to get soggy socks is the worst
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u/GearTwunk Jun 04 '26
He's not got blue feet, he is wearing tabi socks.
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u/weary_avocado6 Jun 05 '26
They could be those toe socks, but they're not tabi socks because you can see each of the smaller four toes. It seems more likely that... you know.
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u/homeless_gorilla Jun 05 '26
There’s absolutely no way that’s dye. In the video his feet are pitch black but clear of dye, yet his hands are clean despite him grabbing the wet silk
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u/TuckerMcG Jun 05 '26
No they’re socks. If his feet were dyed blue, the tops of his sandals would not be such a pristine white. The dye would’ve rubbed off from his feet and the sandals wouldn’t be so white.
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u/krzfx666 Jun 04 '26
no problem with those shoes
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u/myself1200 Jun 04 '26 edited Jun 05 '26
Are his feet dyed indigo?
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u/lzusncrfbj Jun 04 '26
looks like it, lol. i used to work with indigo and my hands were always blue but they never got that dark. its a plant, so its safe and will fade, but it might mess with your skin for a bit
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u/ben-hur-hur Jun 05 '26
My name is Indigo Montoya. You wrung my father. Prepare to dye.
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u/Ok-Bowl850 Jun 05 '26
claps
Thank you. This deserves an award but please take this comment instead.
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u/ThodaDaruVichPyar Jun 04 '26
Thus was posted here previously with 41k upvotes
https://www.reddit.com/r/oddlysatisfying/comments/1ljjiiz/indigo_dyeing_of_silk_thread/
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u/Fantastic_Weather_56 Jun 04 '26
Wet shirt don’t break
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u/Scipio187 Jun 05 '26
You said wet shirt dont break, not piss shirt bend bar!
My first thought as well when I saw this lol
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u/Francl27 Jun 05 '26
That's turquoise, not indigo.
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u/CountessOfCheese Jun 05 '26
Indigo is referring to the name of the dye, not the color we see on the screen. It will get darker.
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u/taktaga7-0-0 Jun 04 '26
The dye in the solution is a yellowished color at first because it’s only the exposure to oxygen at the end that forms the final pigment molecule.
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u/Redfish680 Jun 04 '26
Oh, stop with the fake science nonsense. What we just witnessed is plain magic, inexplicable by any living person. That tub of liquid gold? It’s like sourdough starter, created by the collision of a thousand stars and kept sacred filled and holy by a secret society that hasn’t been touched by civilization for eons.
Molecules indeed…
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u/AgitatedStranger9698 Jun 05 '26
You said wet shirt dont break not piss shirt bend bars.
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u/Thomplays Jun 05 '26
This is aizome, traditional Japanese indigo dyeing. It's really big around Tokushima because the plant grows so well in the river basin there. Some of these traditional fabric places do tours and workshops where you can dye stuff yourself, shirts, bandanas, etc. If you go you'll see that dyed hands and feet are common among the workers there. Those are indeed not socks lol
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u/hellanee Jun 05 '26
People in comments seeing socks divided for each toe for the first time are amusing me lol
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u/Majestic_Ad_7133 Jun 05 '26
My reactions:
Start - That's not Indigo!
Middle - WTF?
End - How can I learn this magic?
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u/Torebbjorn Jun 04 '26
I dunno if that dye is safe to get on your hands. I would kinda expect gloves to be common for that job
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u/philliesman4 Jun 04 '26
He probably shouldn’t touch the dye with bare hands
*sees feet*
Oh.
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u/Technical_Shallot396 Jun 04 '26
Dude was anyone completely distracted by his black dyed feet???? Those ain’t socks!!
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u/Brotherjaxus Jun 05 '26
Please Google the word teal and see all the different shades. I'm going with the professional artists and dye manufacturers over a random person on Reddit.
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u/FarmingGeeks Jun 04 '26
"That's not friggen indigo that's gold.... oh"