Diluting Mordant Paste

Q: I’ve been experimenting with the iron and alum pastes and I have some questions. I printed on scoured cotton canvas and dyed in a light cochineal. My print came out looking like the iron paste barely changed colors. Any idea why this happened?

A: I've never used Cochineal so I can't speak to that specifically, but generally, when I'm using a weak bath of dye, I'll use a diluted mordant. So, the recipe that I posted on the site is for a FULL STRENGTH mordant paste. You can dilute that by up to 10x at least (just use 1/10 the amount of iron when mixing up the batch) when aiming for pale shades. Some peach and lavender tones that I get have come from a 1/16 dilution of the recipe. So perhaps the amount of iron that you've got on your print is simply overpowering the light amount of dye you're using?