Your Dye Is Bugged—The Process and Ingredients of Dye
Color from Crushed Cochinilla. From Flickr user Ryan Greenberg.
Karen Karuza of the Philadelphia Art Institute’s Fashion Design Department discussed her work with a Mexican red dye made from cochinilla, a bug that lives on the nopal cactus. Karuza demonstrated the process used to make this natural dye and show how various additives affect dye colors.
This project was supported by The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage through the Heritage Philadelphia Program.