Plants to Dye For

One definition of “herb” is any useful plant. For years, creative individuals have studied plants and their varied parts to see what raw materials can be derived from them. Some are used in cooking, medicines, crafts, and even as dyeing agents for fibers and fabrics.

Using plants for natural dyeing is an ancient craft that dates back to before people began to spin yarn and weave cloth, when they used plant juices and colored earth to stain the skin. The ancient Picts used a blue dye from the woad plant to frighten the enemy. Native North American tribes used plants called puccoons to draw decorative red patterns on their skin. Europeans used walnut hulls to darken the skin for traveling into unfriendly territory.

Most dye plants were discovered thousands of years ago, as humans investigated the natural world around them and, through trial and error, discovered many uses for plants. Necessity required early people to harvest food, medicines, and building materials from the wild. Their observations and experimentation also taught them to use plant fibers for weaving and spinning, and pigments for dyeing.

Through tradition, certain colors became cultural symbols of religion and class status. The garbs of kings and priests were dyed with the choice, rare colors, such as blue and purple that were costly and difficult to obtain. Through centuries of tradition, colors have continued to symbolize events: red and green for Christmas, orange and black for Halloween, pink for baby girls and blue for boys.

Dyeing became a skilled and valued craft among the ancient Phoenicians, Greeks and Romans. Textile makers during the Middle Ages, started professional guilds, which involved much rivalry and some thefts of dyers’ trade secrets. Trained craftsmen who had learned their skill in European dye shops continued the dyer’s trade in colonial America.

By the 19th century, synthetic dyes came into use and commercial dye workshops used large vats to handle long bolts of fabric. Although many rural women continued to collect plant materials for dyeing their own homespun yardage, those who could afford to would purchase finished fabric.

Few people in this day and age attempt to dye their own fiber or fabric. I recently had an opportunity to interview a New Boston woman with years of experience in natural dyeing. Cheryl came to my house with samples of hand-dyed wool, some of which she had spun herself. She had cards with pieces of yarn tied to the edges in many colors and shades, with notations on how she had obtained each color.

Cheryl once worked at a farm museum in Michigan where she gave instruction on natural dyeing. She harvested plants from the wild, and heated them to extract the desired colors. Dressed in period garb, she worked over a wood fire, dipping wool into a cauldron of prepared dye and explaining the details of plant dyeing.

Dyers add mordants (mord meaning “to bite”) to the dye bath to help penetrate or “bite” into the fiber. The most popular mordant is a combination of alum and cream of tartar. Many mordants are metallic in nature such as copper, tin, iron, and chrome. Vinegar can heighten the color, especially reds. Ammonia has the ability to draw the color out of the plant materials, especially grasses and lichen. Different mordants used with the same plant material can obtain a different shade of the same color, even in some cases, a totally different color.

Wild-crafted materials used in dyeing include herbs, flowers, grasses, lichen, berries, bark, and even insects. Shades of red can be obtained from sumac, mountain cranberry, pokeweed berries, madder, blackberries, lichen and cochineal (insects). Yellows and golds are available from cosmos, coneflower, yarrow, coreopsis, onionskins, and rhododendron leaves. Carrot tops, as well as evernia (a lichen), using copper sulfate as a mordant, produce a nice green dye. Blues are the most difficult colors to obtain, with woad and indigo being the main sources.

I was amazed at all the different shades of yellow, gold, green and rust as well as all the variations in color produced by different mordants. Mother Nature has provided us with quite an extensive palette of colors.

My chat with Cheryl earned me an invite to her next dyeing party, where her spinner and weaver friends experiment with different plant materials. Her enthusiasm was contagious and I’m anxious to meet some of her friends. After all, they are a dyeing breed.

By Maddy Perron, UNH Cooperative Extension Master Gardener

For more information call the UNH Cooperative Extension's Family, Home & Garden Center's Info-line (toll free) at 1-877-398-4769 or send us an email. Volunteers are available to answer your questions Monday through Friday 9:00am to 2:00 p.m.

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