Boots in Cochineal Scarf

Pam Juarez

Each scarf is silkscreen printed in Kjipuktuk, Nova Scotia, using paper stencils and thickened mordants made from scratch. Mordants are chemicals that help natural dyes bind to fibre. Depending on what mordant is used, the natural dye will react to it and bind to the fibre as a different colour when submerged in a natural dye bath. Five different mordant mixes using alum, iron and tannin, and a natural dye bath were used to give this scarf colour.

Cochineal

Cochineal is a hardshell insect that grows on prickly pear cacti (nopales) native to Mexico. While cochineal is a parasite to the nopal, it produces carminic acid, which has given colour to hundreds of years of textile tradition.