A Garden to Dye For. Chris McLaughlin

oils, finishes, or chemicals that were added by a manufacturer. The layman’s term for scouring is “washing.”

       Textiles. When I use the word “textiles” as a catch-all word, I’m referring to fabric, fiber and anything else that can be dyed.

       Official Endless-Shades-of-Color Disclaimer

      This may be the oddest disclaimer you’ll ever encounter. Still, it’s important to at least attempt to limit a deluge of emails that could potentially hit my inbox should you not understand this little tidbit about natural dyes. Sometimes even if a recipe is followed to a “T”, you may not get the color you expected. It’s one of the most fun/most frustrating things about working with dyes derived from the natural world.

      Half of the truth is that color is nothing if not scientifically explainable. In other words, there’s a logical reason why you got purple instead of true blue from your black bean dye. The other half of this truth is that most of us unscientific types are going to be hard-put to explain exactly why a color went rogue on them. The answer here is “don’t panic,” because usually with a little thought and experimenting the “Aha!” moment does happen and it all becomes crystal clear.

      You will be amazed at the color variations that your garden and landscape has in store for you! Before I give you The Great Black Bean Example in Chapter 2, here are some of the most common things that will affect your color results:

       The amount of plant material used in the dyebath will help dictate color intensity.

       The temperature of the dyebath. Some-times this doesn’t affect a darn thing. And sometimes it affects everything. Example: a black bean dyebath is created by letting the beans soak in cold water overnight. If you heat the bath up, the color just freaks out. No bueno . . . and no blue. (Black beans just happen to be my best example today).

       What mordant did you use on your fiber? Or did you skip that part? No worries; you often can. But it will make a difference.

       Modify much? You may be thinking that you didn’t use a modifier, so you know that can’t be why you got a color surprise. Are you surrrrre? Could you have made your dyebath in a reactive pot, such as aluminum, iron, or copper – as opposed to stainless steel, ceramic, or glass? Because the sneaky minerals from those first three modified your fiber for sure.

       How long you leave the textiles in the dyebath can change things up big time. I’ve used dyes where the final color came immediately and the fiber never needed time to soak in the bath. But I’ve had others that show their true colors only when they’ve been given their due time.

       The type of fiber you’re dyeing is a huge factor for both color and colorfastness. I’ve found if something is going to have a difficult time taking color, it’s cotton. So if you’ve already put the effort out to create a dyebath, you may want to have several different types of fibers ready to drop into the pot before you write disparaging notes in your dye journal about a certain plant.

       When the plant was harvested often changes the hues. “When” meaning “which part of the season.” Did you gather young leaves and stems in late spring or more mature materials in the middle of the summer? Were those pomegranates young or overripe?

       Did you let the plant materials dry before you used them – or did you toss them into the dye pot while they were fresh?

       Which part of the plant did you use? Flower petals, leaves, stems, twigs, bark, nuts, and roots will all offer various colors.

       Here’s a biggie: your water’s pH. Is it on the alkaline or acidic side? We’ll get deeper into that very soon.

      All of that said, there are some recipes in the book that will yield some pretty predicable results, I promise. That’s my disclaimer in a nutshell.

      One

      Another Good Reason for Your Plant Addiction

      Just in case you needed a new excuse to peruse, purchase and obsess over plants – you’ve come to the right place. Let me introduce you to the world of borrowing color from your garden!

      Fair warning, though: once you start dyeing it’s surprisingly hard to stop. Forever after, you’ll be looking at everything around you in one of two ways. The next plant you lay eyes on, one of your first thoughts will be “Hmmm . . . can I get color out of that?” Anytime you see fabric or fiber, you’ll think, “I wonder if that will take color?”

      To you, dear gardener, I just want to say “Sorry ‘bout that” and “Welcome to your new addiction.”

      It’s probably best to start from the beginning. My attraction to plants began when I was about ten years old and discovered tiny seedlings (volunteers) growing willy-nilly in our traditionally landscaped backyard. I promptly dug them up and placed them into bathroom-sized Dixie cups along with some fresh, bagged soil.

      Lining them up carefully in my little brother’s red wagon, I wheeled them behind me going door-to-door peddling them for 10 cents apiece. Not only did our unsuspecting neighbors witness a budding entrepreneurial spirit, but a gardener was born as well.

      By that time it was already too late for me. Pandora’s box had been opened and my obsession continued to thrive in various ways; flowers, vegetables, houseplants, and herbs each had a turn and all of them had my devout attention. Every time I discovered a new way to use plants in my daily life, I had a tendency to throw myself headfirst into the topic.

      About twenty years ago, an interesting (and beautiful) article caught my eye. It described how one could derive color from plants found in any average garden. It included directions for dyeing Easter eggs. I was transfixed. Until that day, I had only played around with pounding random flowers and leaves in order to transfer their color – I didn’t have any official instructions on utilizing plant colors except for a couple of articles I’d run across here and there. I certainly didn’t realize that the dyes could be permanent. I would find that out much later (to my delight) as I was an avid sewer, as well.

      Years passed. Along with my insatiable need for plants and fabric, I decided that I should broaden my world and learn to knit. Funny thing happened on my way to knitting class: I thought too hard about the yarn. I needed to know where it came from and how it was made. In an embarrassingly short amount of time, I became completely smitten with fiber – all kinds, every kind. I fell mostly for animal fibers such as wool (sheep), mohair (goat), and angora (rabbit).

      And then I did what comes naturally when one has an all-encompassing love affair with wool and the