It snowed again here in Wisconsin, and I wanted to get some practice with my snow dyeing… What Can I use to Hand Dye Yarn? For Acid Dyes to Work you need to use ported based fibers, that means, Wool, Alpaca, Silk, etc. Acrylic won’t work. Dyeing wool with snow is somewhat of a surprise. I never
Dyeing wool is easier than it sounds. We show you several ways to do it, so you can use it in various ways on the homestead.
Nature has such amazing colors and so many gorgeous layers and color combinations. Have you ever wondered if you could dye yarn with a particular herb or other plants nearby you? Growing up I loved to read and in several of my book adventures were people that had created dyes out of the everyday nat
Beginner's Guide to Hand Dyeing Yarn Learn the basics of how to hand dye beautiful yarn! Where to find yarn, what type of dye to use and more
You can grow natural dyes for wool in your back yard garden. As farm folks at heart, it's natural for us to prefer do it yourself projects.
How to Speckle Dye Yarn (Step by step guide). Learn all about dyeing sprinkled or speckled yarn with Kool Aid drink powder.
See what I did there?? Dye, while a little scary (it’s permanent! it stains things!) can also be a great way to get big results from your DIY projects with a minimum of effort. Here are nine DIYs perfect for transforming your favorite textiles with a little color. Above: From Livet Hemma, instructions for adding a little color to a plain old white IKEA duvet. (Use Google Translate to get directions in English.
I’ve been processing my own wool for several years now. I got started after learning to run a fiber studio and hosting my first fiber festival in 2015. I studied hard under several very talented professionals who taught me to sheer, clean, dye, card, and spin lovely locks of all kinds. Needless to s
Dyeing wool with bracken to get a range of colours by altering pH and modifying with iron
Dyeing yarn with rosemary is a great way to get started with natural dyeing. Rosemary is readily available in many regions, even if you
Marigolds are one of the easiest flowers to experiment with due to accessibility and a simple dye process, yet here I am, 15 years into dyeing, using them for the first time. One of my 2018 g…
To dye with Silver Birch tree bark, I went looking for freshly fallen timber. I think Ladka is right, last week's bark dye probably did not colour wool as strongly as expected because the crab apple had died before I peeled its branches. Searching copse after copse of silver birches, it took me ages to find any wood that had definitely come down recently. At last, a branch with a raw torn break from the tree, unsullied young bark, perfect to harvest for dye. Which I did, feeling in full sympathy with Robert Frost. 'One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.' Not that I wished to vandalise a living tree and as the poem points out, birch trunks are incredibly flexible, so I doubt I would be strong enough to snap one. Just that I, too, would like to get away from earth awhile And then come back to it and begin over. Anyway, although my tree climbing days are pretty much over, whatever else is going on, the dog still needs walking and there's always another plant dye to discover. Once every scrap was peeled with a sharp knife, leaving only the heartwood, about 200g bark was carried home to soak in a bucket of cold water for a week. The fluid turned a pale brownish gold and its pH dropped to 5, even though the weather was freezing. When it had been simmered for an hour, left overnight and then sieved, the dye bath colour had deepened considerably. Intending to dye yarn suitable for bags, during that week, I had been online shopping for some cheap, bulky, durable wool. Cheviot from World of Wool looked like a bargain. Once it arrived, I found the 'yarn' was a single with minimal twist, I'm sure I've seen pencil roving with more cohesive structure. Hey ho, it knits up ok. I divided a 200g skein into four parts, then soaked and simmered three of them for a hour in the birch bark dye pot. Seeing they were only pastel pink, I dropped a little piece of merino yarn in the cooling dyebath and left it overnight. The Cheviot darkened a bit, but the merino turned out much deeper pink, despite no simmering. So, it doesn't seem that my Cheviot yarn was an ideal choice for dyeing, either. You can just see how much deeper dyed the bit of merino yarn, it's lying on top of the far left skein. Adding a teaspoon of alum to the dyebath, I simmered the fourth skein, hoping this might improve the uptake of colour. The wool came out just as pale, only more of a salmon pink. No matter, the lighter colour might be a good foil for showing up the effect of modifiers. Pouring half the dye bath into another pot, I added a slug of iron solution to one half and copper to the other. One skein went back into each pot for half an hour's heating, before being rinsed and dried. So, here are my silver birch bark dye results. From the left, the first skein was unmordanted and unmodified, the second had an iron afterbath, the third, copper and the last one was dyed with alum in the original dye afterbath. Pretty colours, but pale again, this time I think I'll blame the wool. I am tired of considerations and life is too much like a pathless wood. Wait for this, I bought a whole kilo of that Cheviot. Sigh See this post for an improved method I developed in 2018
6 Yarn Dyeing Techniques. Learn how to dye yarn with these 6 different color patterns including Solid, Speckled, Variegated and more.
I’ve been meaning to do several things with the information I’ve learned about dyeing fiber in the last year. I’ve wanted to make awesome videos to post on YouTube, write blog po…
When I saw the huge amount of Purple Dead Nettle covering our property this spring, I wondered if I could create a Purple Dead Nettle dye for our wool.
This blog post contains a step-by-step approach of how to dye yarn with dandelions. Although they are often considered weeds, dandelions have
Mordants and Assists available at The Yarn Tree Today I’d like to talk about mordants.The word mordant comes from the French word “mordre” – to bite. The mordant combines with a natural dye and fixes the color to the material. Mordants make the color richer, lightfast and wash-fast.
My woad plant (Isatis Tinctoria) suffered quite an extensive catepillar attack while I was away this summer. I thought it best to dye with it as soon as possible before it got all eaten away. This …
How to Dye Wool Yarn With Coffee, Tea, and Turmeric: I recently came into possession of a white ball of wool yarn, and I thought to myself, "Huh, how boring!" So I decided I would try my own attempt at dying yarn. I've never dyed yarn before so I started to do a lot of internet research, and what I fo…
Learn how easy it is to hand paint yarn with this step by step yarn dyeing tutorial. You, too can make your own beautiful yarns!
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You don't need to have a fancy set-up to dye wool. Your basics are wool (or any protein fiber, which includes alpaca or silk, fiber that comes from an animal), a heat source, your dye of choice (acid dyes), and an acid (which is why they're called acid dyes), and of course a thing to dye it in. Chec
I've been wanting to try dyeing wool felt for some special projects. A few weekends ago I experimented with ice dyeing, have you tried it? It's a popular technique for creating tie-dye-look T-shirts and fabric. I've also seen knitters dye yarn using this technique. I don't have a detailed tutorial for you at the moment,
The ultimate guide to natural dyeing. A comprehensive guide to all the everything you nrrd to know. Quick, easy and simple to read. Free Guide
I get a lot of emails/messages with questions about techniques and ideas, and sometimes it takes me a really long time to answer them....Usually because I want to answer thoroughly and have difficulty setting aside the time to do so. I thought I'd answer some of your questions here, as the information may
Have you ever wanted to try natural dyeing? It's as easy as raiding your pantry! Check out this step-by-step tutorial for how to dye yarn using black beans to get a gorgeous smokey blue color!
How to Speckle Dye Yarn (Step by step guide). Learn all about dyeing sprinkled or speckled yarn with Kool Aid drink powder.
Anyone who can make a pot of tea can dye a skein of wool or yard of plain linen to whatever color they want, using commonly found plants.
How to turn plants like lavender, nettles, goldenrod, and elderberries into natural dyes for fabrics like cotton, linen plus wool and silk. Use this starter guide to begin creating botanical dyes from your garden.
In this Beginner’s Guide to Natural Dyes you will learn how to produce intense and bright colors using natural dyes. Free Printable Dye list.
Dyed Shetland Wool Top 100g Shetland wool is in demand for handmade textiles because of its variety of colours and adaptable quality. This British wool is fine, soft and silky to the touch with a good, bulky down characteristic. 31mic average length of 80mm. The dyes used are commercial acid dyes which conform with Oeko-Tex 100 quality system We also have a selection of natural shades to choose from. Perfect for hand spinning, hand felting and many other craft uses. Colours may vary from photos.
“Two of the best things in your kitchen right now: coffee and tea,” Betsy and Erica told me. “Because they have caffeine and taste great and
Last month we had some serious storms. On a blowy Sunday, himself and I took the dog out and found a fallen silver birch tree. I was well pleased, took my penknife out and started peeling a branch, himself soon got bored and walked on with the dog. I went back next day to strip another branch and ended up with a whole kilogram of fresh bark which I shared out between three pots and left to soak for a week. Bark dyes are sensitive to changes in pH and shifting the dye bath pH to alkali is recommended to improve the colour. Unfortunately, alkali does not improve wool fibres, it weakens them and makes them feel rougher. This seemed a good opportunity to test out how much or how little alkali would get the best results from silver birch bark dye. I dissolved a heaped teaspoonful of soda ash in hot water and added it to one of the three pots of soaking bark peelings, before leaving them all to ferment. The following day, the fluid in the alkaline pot was already much darker. Snow fell, so I brought the frozen pots indoors. After a week, I tested the contents with Universal Indicator papers. Fermentation had made the two plain pots become acidic, testing at about pH 5. The third pot was still strongly alkaline at pH 9. I added enough soda ash to bring one of the acidic pots up to neutral pH 7 and simmered them all for an hour before taking out samples to look at the dye bath colours and to double check that the pH had remained the same. The photo shows samples of baths at pH 5, 7 and 9. The deep colour in the alkaline jar looked by far the most promising. In the meantime, I had been shopping on eBay, looking for some durable chunky wool yarn at a decent price. I was well pleased with my five 100g skeins of British wool from woolbothy. As advertised, they were not smoochy soft, being worsted spun they were sleek and a little stiff, handling more like cotton, but well structured and neither rough nor hairy. I divided them into ten 50g skeins, gave them a hot soak with detergent to lift off the dressing, then a couple of plain water rinses. No mordant is needed for bark dyes. Three skeins went into each pot for an hour of simmering, then I took one skein out of each pot and boiled the rest, to see whether keeping bark dyes simmering below the boil really mattered. Here are the results, rinsed in plain water after drying out for a couple of days. In the front row, the skeins that had about an hour simmering, in the back row, the skeins that had a further boil and stayed overnight in the dye pot. On the left, the acidic pH 5 skeins, in the middle, the neutral pH 7 skeins and on the right, the alkaline pH 9 skeins. This is a good strong wool yarn, acid had made the beige skeins smoother while the deep brown yarn from the alkali bath felt slightly roughened, a little squeaky, but still nice enough to handle. All the wool was puffier and softer after washing, dyeing and rinsing than it had been when I first bought it. My conclusions - it is definitely worth testing pH and getting an acidic, fermented bark bath up to neutral before dyeing, but going for a strong alkali is counterproductive, unless you like brown or you are dyeing plant rather than animal fibres. The colours are deeper after boiling and longer steeping, I'd say keeping below the boil isn't critical, though I like the pink from the pH neutral simmer best and I would hesitate to boil a wool that was prone to felting, such as merino. Having two of each of the deeper dyed skeins, I decided to modify them with copper as I like that better on silver birch than modifying with iron. The final three skeins were heated in a new pot of water with a slug of homemade copper acetate solution - just offcuts of copper piping left in a mixture of water and vinegar. This one has been quietly dissolving all winter and currently has a strong blue. The copper modified skeins from each pH dye bath are shown in the back row of this picture. Six small skeins of silk were dyed together with the wool and they are shown on top of the front six skeins of wool. One last and rather important test before embarking on a multicoloured project. I knitted a swatch with three rows of each colour and put it through a 30 degree wool wash cycle in the washing machine using a handwash liquid detergent that is pH neutral. Happily, thorough washing had no ill effects, the colours that had been dyed at different pH stayed just as they were. Outdoor photography gives a truer impression of the pinkness of birch bark dye. Plus it was fun to tit about with wool in the woods now the days aren't quite so cold.
Today I want to share my experience on natural dyeing with amaranth with you. I grew the amaranth ‘Hopi red dye’ variety from seed for the...
Welcome to the amazing world of yarn dyeing!!! Have you ever wanted to start dyeing your own yarn or just wanted to see how it was done? It can be an intensive process or one that is simpler depending upon what yarn dyeing technique and material you are using. Liz of HighFiberArtz has created an
I recently dyed yarn with avocados for the first time and I can’t believe I waited so long to try this out! I shared the entire experience and step-by-step tutorial on Instagram here and it continues with rounds 3 and 4 here! I absolutely fell in love with this process. It’s simple, easy, and so...
DIY Natural dyeing. How to dye fabric with tea. Step by step tutorial for beginners will teach you how to dye fabric and wool using tea.
Labeled with the dye stuff. Color variations due to number of baths or mordant (alum or iron).
Dyeing with rusty things is such a satisfying part of natural and botanical dye, and a great way to extend the possibilities in your dye pot. I use it in a few different ways, and I wanted to share some of my outcomes with you, as well as share how to make rust water or how to do iron after dye.
Allowing the front garden to grow wild looked delightful earlier this Spring, a succession of bulbs bloomed in the lawn to the admiration of at least some of my neighbours. Now things are getting that bit too shaggy, crossing the line between naturalised and neglected. Ivy has grown over the wall and nobody appreciates walking into a wet slap of leaves. After I cut back the worst, it occurred to me that I had read somewhere you can make dye from ivy leaves. Taking a tea break, I found a page all about ivy in Jenny Dean's book, Wild Colours. Jenny writes that ivy leaves and berries will dye an equal weight of material and are best suited to animal fibres. There were few berries left on the pruned branches, though easily enough leaves to fill my dye pot. They weighed about 300g. Adding water, I put the pot on the stove to simmer and went looking for some test fibres to soak ready for dyeing. Lifting the lid an hour or so later, the leaves had softened and the rising steam had a tang of rhubarb about it, so something was being extracted, although the water in the pot had no apparent colour at all. Testing a sample with pH indicator paper showed the ivy had at least made the clear fluid acidic. Adding dissolved soda ash to another sample worked like magic, a lucent yellow green instantly appeared in the jar. A teaspoonful of soda ash brought the pH of the dye pot up to neutral, green colour appeared and convinced me there was dye in there, so I added my trial fibres in with the ivy leaves and turned the heat back on. Giving the pot a stir ten minutes later, the green glow in the water had all disappeared again and the fibres hadn't taken on any colour at all. That rhubarb smell in the steam must mean acid release, because indicator paper showed the pH had already dropped back down to acid. I added another teaspoon of soda ash, completed the hour of simmering and left the pot overnight. Next morning, the fibres had gone green and the dye bath fluid looked brown, though when I retested it, once again, its pH had become acidic. I suspect that my two teaspoonsfuls of soda ash provided far too little alkali to counterbalance the acidity from stewed ivy leaves and that my attempt to alkanise the bath had had little effect on the overall ivy dye process. Here is how the fibres looked straight from the dye bath - from the left, two skeins of alum mordanted wool yarn, next, one iron premordanted skein and one copper premordanted skein and the piece of linen mordanted with alum acetate. The unmordanted cotton fabric had not taken up significant colour. I divided one of the alum mordanted skeins into two smaller skeins and one short length. The short length was soaked for 20 minutes in an alkali solution. One small skein was briefly reheated with an iron solution to modify its colour and the other was modified with a little copper solution. Here is the final result of ivy leaf dye using twice as much weight of leaves as wool. On the left, alum premordanted skein with a bit on top that was modified with alkali after dyeing - far from improving the colour, it diminished it. Bottom row, a brownish version on the iron premordanted wool and a good green from the copper premordant, then just to mix things up, the two small skeins on top show a bright green from alum premordant and copper modifier and a dull green from alum mordant and iron modifier. Ivy leaves are plentiful, more are coming over the wall already, it's good to know I can make green dye all year round. In future, I shall not be adding any soda ash, just trusting that the colour will develop once the wool is in with the softened leaves. I would certainly consider copper a useful premordant. As a modifier, copper took effect much more quickly than usual - I am only just realising that to modify dyes well with copper, you really need to add it in an acidic bath. Here's a green wool heart for the Green Man as he dies and lives in the force of Spring.
This blog post is all about iron (ferrous sulfate) as a natural dye modifier. When it comes to natural dyeing, iron plays an important role
How to turn plants like lavender, nettles, goldenrod, and elderberries into natural dyes for fabrics like cotton, linen plus wool and silk. Use this starter guide to begin creating botanical dyes from your garden.
The ultimate guide to natural dyeing. A comprehensive guide to all the everything you nrrd to know. Quick, easy and simple to read. Free Guide
Anyone who can make a pot of tea can dye a skein of wool or yard of plain linen to whatever color they want, using commonly found plants.
