More Natural Dye Plants
I haven’t tried most of these, but have heard that they produce colour.
Strawberry Blight
Latin: Chenopodium capitatum
Low lying plant with leaves spaced far apart. Where the leaf joins the stem is a cluster of bright red fruit. Use the juice of the berries for a pink/purple. Try vinegar to set the dye, or an alum mordant.
Avocado
Scrub the peels clean. Add to bath of vinegar and cream of tartar. Rosey gold. Add premordanted wool (alum)
Also try avocado pits.
Purple CabbageMordants:
Alum – yellow, beige
Ammonia – pale green
Tin – lavender
Vinegar – pink, lilac
Afterbath: add washing soda dissolved in boiling water
turquoise
Black BirchSimmer birch bark in dye bath. Add mordanted wool. Simmer.
Colour: pinkish beige
Hollyhock berries
Colour: pale yellow.
(or sometimes blue!)
Hollyhock: Greenish side of BlueCoreopsis Tinctoria
Use 1 1/2 cups of flowers per dye bath.
Mordants:alum – antique pineiron – dark brown
copper – chestnut browntin – gold
Delphinium BlossomsColour: sage greenHorseradish leaves
Geranium LeavesSimmer with rusty nails or in an iron pot.Colour: dark grey
Willow barkColour: Coffee cream Choke cherry
Colour: pink
Dyeing with Willow Bark
Categories: DYES