Natural Dyeing
Natural Dyeing from Jane Robinson on Vimeo.
Natural dyeing can be done at home using dye plants that are easy to grow and hardy. Leaves, roots, berries, onion skins, bark, flowers, blossoms and nuts can all be used to create natural colours. Flowers, berries and red onions produce shades of pink and red. Flowers such as Marigolds create shades of orange, rustic shades come from seeds and buds, whereas leaves such as nettle make shades of yellow and green. Blue and brown dyes are produced using roots such as madda. Purple, green and black dyes come from husks, logwood and barks. Natural dyes dye natural cellulose fibres such as cotton, linen, wool, animal fibres and silk. Materials for dyeing are soaked in a colour fixative such as salt, vinegar or tannin. The dye solution is made by preparing and cutting the plant material into small pieces and placing them into a metal container with 2 times the amount of water to material being dyed. The plants are boiled and left to simmer for about an hour and then strained into a muslin cloth. The colour and shade depends on the time the material is left in the dye, for deep shades the material would be left in over night.
The exciting part of natural dyeing is that you never know exactly what colour you will get, the colour depends on the materials being dyed, the strength of the dye solution as well as the colour fixative. The fun is in experimentation which does involve writing notes if you want to achieve the same colour again.
Although no chemicals need to be used in natural dyeing some plant dyes may be toxic so its always safe to check and always wear rubber gloves when dyeing.
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