Plants for Dyeing: Black Walnut

Instructions on how to make dye and ink from black walnut hulls

It’s Fall: Plants for Dyeing

Here in Connecticut, the end of summer and start of fall are great times for gathering plants for natural dyeing. I’ve written about a number of the plants that I’ve used with success in other posts, and for convenience, here’s a compilation of them:
General instrux included:
black walnut
goldenrod
Queen Anne’s Lace
comfrey
wild aster
onion skins
pokeweed
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Textile Tools – Teasel

Before wool can be spun it is necessary to comb, or card, it to align the fibers and remove knots and debris. Today that job is done very efficiently by machine, but before mechanization, of course, it had to be done by hand. Wool cards are steel brushes that look very much like [...]

Natural Dyeing: Bracken Fern

The very first natural dye I ever used (perhaps 20 years ago) is bracken fern. It was April in CT, and I had to do a demo at a Rev War re-enactment. Not many plants available here that early in the spring. But the  “fiddleheads” from the wild ferns that grow around the yard were [...]

Natural Dyeing: Goldenrod

The blossoming of goldenrod every August always brings to mind the impending start of another school year, and the first of the annual agricultural fairs. Because it blooms at the same time as ragweed, many people with allergies believe that they are caused by goldenrod, but this has been found not to be true. So [...]

Plants for Dyeing: Queen Anne’s Lace

Queen Anne’s Lace (aka wild carrot) grows abundantly all over the place here in southern New England. This has become one of my favorite dye sources for use during the month of August. Easy to find in large quantities, I depend upon this wild flower for [...]

Plants for dyeing: Pokeweed

It’s mid August, which means that the berries on the pokeweed bushes that grow around here will soon be ripe.  Pokeweed is shrub that commonly grows in dry, neglected areas. In New England, it generally blossoms in mid-summer and sets fruit in September. Throughout history, pokeweed has had several uses. One of the first [...]

Growing Indigo in Connecticut

This spring, I’ve become friends with a new staff member at the Webb-Deane-Stevens museum in Wethersfield, CT, where we both work as textile arts teachers. Joy is a talented and skilled weaver, and she’s been telling me about her adventures in growing indigo and making a dye from the leaves of her plants. I’ve used [...]