r/naturaldye

Both shades are alum mordanted & dyed with madder extract. In love with how this one came out, especially the color combo!

(Image 1.A- Pounded Flowers on paper towel)

(Image 1.B- Hot extraction)

(Image 1.C Cold extraction)

Hello All!

I wanted to catalog some experimentation with the Amorpha Fruticosa.

I've seen limited documentation regarding this particular dye, and even ethnobotanical information is scarce.

This is not a large batch dye, nor am I even versed in dye making. I am a food/medicinal forager primarily.

With that being said;

In this forum, there is about a two year old post explaining someone's own experiment with their plant. And I, like them, treated Desert Indigo just like True indigo, I harvested the leaves and did a hot extraction with an alkaline agent, I aerated it, the whole shebang. It did indeed yield a dye, it was a beautiful honey color, but it wasn't indigo by any means.

Some brilliant minds suggested I use the flowers instead of the leaves, this yielded much more promising results.

1.A I did a flower pounded method with a hammer which yielded a rich, royal violet shade. It was very pretty and I was cautiously optimistic.

1.B Hot extraction produced also a rich, and vivid shade that I can only describe as a malevolent bog hag green, with hints of purple mixed in. I dipped some wool in, it turned gray with tints of green.

1.C I left some wet flowers on a napkin to see. This method was most promising and produced a true indigo reminiscent of denim.

The flowers can be used for some interesting dye. If dye was my thing, I'd love to tamper around more with potential cold extraction.

I hope this proves helpful.

I’ve been trying to get juuust the right pink and I wanted to share some of my results. Skein A is 10% sappanwood (eastern Brazilwood), skein B is 5% sappanwood with 1 tsp of chalk (calcium carbonate) added to the dye bath, and skein C is 5% cochineal. Skeins A and B were dyed with the sawdust in the bath and skein C was dyed with extract I made by boiling lightly crushed cochineal beetles with several changes of water.

All were scoured with orvus paste and mordanted with 12% alum. The base is 50% wool, 25% flax, and 25% mulberry silk.

Skein B is my favorite, I think, but how cool is it that color shift with the calcium? I think modifiers are my favorite part of natural dyeing. I’m planning out some studies of pH shifts, calcium, iron baths, and who knows what else.

I have been trying, to no avail, to achieve a dark brown on cotton. I first did a tannin bath with cutch at 15%, mordanted with aluminium acetate and then did a dyebath with black walnut at 100% weight of fabric, 1% iron and 15% sequoia. Sadly, the colour is still not rich enough. Has anyone successfully produced a colour like this and if so, how?! Thank you!!

This is my first sheep fleece. Still have 1/3 to go but am ecstatic with the yarn so far!! Pink is cochineal i think i threw a little logwood in as well, blue/purple is logwood (may have thrown a little cochineal in there LOL) and yellow is… RED CLOVER! I picked a hundred blossoms from the field because they are going to mow it for a festival in ~2 weeks. Heated for an hour and sat it overnight. The yellow on this yarn is subtle BUT i am cool dyeing store bought white wool in the rest of the tea rn and it’s BIGTIME yellow - pics to come after they’re done and rinsed we shall see. I also did an alkanet skein but the color is off white - disappointing and expensive.
Now I’m off to make a shawl!

Hand spun and dyed wool shawl/scarf. Swipe to see from the start

I know it’s common knowledge that oak dyes this way but just wanted to share my dye tests experimenting with spring oak leaves. I’ve dyed with autumn oak leaves and ecoprinted a ton, I honestly see no difference is early or late season oak!

I bought this garment on the online vintage shop and want to dye it purple. I'm feeling lazy and I have less money. So I think I'd better to dye it with grape juice like delmonte rather than using natural ingredients. But I'm not sure what's the result if I do it. Is it bad idea?