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
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
A comment on one of my hubs, that on the negative effects of the petroleum and of the petrochemical industry, has led me to write this article, to demonstrate that man could easily survive and have all that he wishes for, even without polluting the...
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!
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.
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!
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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…
Ok, I know I’m a little late for Valentine’s Day, but I just stumbled into the most glorious pink dye (or perhaps stain – more on that later) using some past-their-prime berries. Below is the long version – scroll down for the quick and dirty! Or find a recipe for natural yellow dye HERE. Continue reading "Natural Dye: Berry Pinks"
Dyeing wool with bracken to get a range of colours by altering pH and modifying with iron
6 Yarn Dyeing Techniques. Learn how to dye yarn with these 6 different color patterns including Solid, Speckled, Variegated and more.
So yesterday's post is all about what I did and what results I got. You can see it here . **DISCLAIMER: I am being told by professiona...
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.
Natural Dyeing With Black Beans: Here comes another experiment in my Natural Dyeing Series. FiberArtsy.com Did you know that you can dye fabric and yarn with food? Before the invention of synthetic dyes, people dyed all of their fabrics and yarn with natural things like tea, onion …
Dyeing yarn with rosemary is a great way to get started with natural dyeing. Rosemary is readily available in many regions, even if you
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.
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This blog post contains a step-by-step approach of how to dye yarn with dandelions. Although they are often considered weeds, dandelions have
How to Speckle Dye Yarn (Step by step guide). Learn all about dyeing sprinkled or speckled yarn with Kool Aid drink powder.
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.
Whether you’re having your medieval clothes made, or buying fabric to make them yourself, the first question new re-enactors ask is “What colour should my clothes be?” The correct, but unhelpful, answer is “It depends”. It depends on the precise period of history, the place, the socio-economic status, the profession etc of the person you’re portraying.
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.
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...
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...
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.
“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
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…
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,
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.
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.
If you want to use natural dyes in your projects and on your fabrics, you need...dye! Grow your own plant dyes to get dye from flowers.
If you like gardening or spending time in nature, you might enjoy making and using dyes from plants. Dyes from flowers, fruits, and leaves of garden plants and wildflowers create unique, mellow colors very unlike the dense colors from commercial dyes. And with natural plant dyes you don’t need to use dangerous chemicals. Dying with […]
Hopi Red Dye Amaranth – buy seeds here! A gorgeous annual 4 to 6 feet tall with long, draping flower heads, this amaranth is a stunner in the garden and has so many uses! Find organically grown seeds here! How to grow: Site Selection: Annual, support of mature plants may be necessary. Plant in wellContinue reading "Growing Hopi Red Dye Amaranth"
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.
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 Not To Dye Wool Yarn Plus a lot of […]
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.
Devil's Beggartick provides a warm, luminous, yellow dye that is quite colorfast. Here's the method I use for dyeing with Devil's Beggartick.
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!
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.
