A Dyers Perennial Garden

Chemical Engineer George Cranch, who avocations include dying and weaving, wrote as follows in 'Handweavers and Craftsmen': Now you have started, you look up old formulas. You see old tapestries with new eyes. You try other flowers, barberry bush trimmings, privet, pokeweed, autumn leaves, blueberries. Some work, some don't. The landscape changes in meaning. This field of goldenrod is now a mine of dye. That sneezy ragweed seems to havea lime-green colour (it does on wool).... You sense nature in a new way; new hues, new smells, new intimacy."

Modern dyes are produced in factories but what greater factory is there than nature herself? Plants are living factories that produce food and fibre, lumber, antibiotics, many chemical substances that are not yet understood, and of course, dyes. For thousands of years, and up until about a century ago, the colour or fabrics, whether clothes, rugs or tapestries, came mainly from the crude juices of plants. It doesn't matter where you look; colour has been very important in all cultures on earth, and there are recipes and dye plants from all over the world.

The process in breif
The process of dying most colors of wool include:

• Mordanting; the mordant is the material chemically bonding the dye to the wool, setting the color;
• Extracting the dyestuff from the natural material to create the dye bath;
• Dyeing the yarn by cooking in the dye bath;
• Rinsing dye residue from the yarn;
• Washing the yarn with soap, and;
• Air drying the yarn.

Does it sound simple enough? Coming up with a good colour can take an awful lot of practice and experimentation. My own experiences with tinting fabrics with natural dyes has led me to an awful lot of fun, but in reality I have ruined quite a few perfectly good t-shirts, relegating them to the work-clothes bin only. Dying yarns is the best way to start. You can buy un-dyed wool at many good yarn shops. I have provided some links at the bottom of this article to help you with your projects.

A few plants
In looking at latin names, many of you will be familiar with the descriptive uses put to the species name, or second part in the two-parted binomial. For example, in our latin name, Homo sapiens, the species name sapiens means 'thinking'. A common species name in plants is 'officinalis' or 'officinale' -- this means this plant was once listed as medicinal in the official record. Suitably, 'tinctoria' defines a use as a dye plant. Listed here you will find a few easy dye plants to grow, and some links to get you started on preparing dyes at home.

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