Natural Dyes

The Beginning of an Adventure

Celia had unclasped the necklace and drawn it off. “It would be a little tight for your neck; something to lie down and hang would suit you better,” she said, with some satisfaction. The complete unfitness of the necklace from all points of view for Dorothea, made Celia happier in taking it. She was opening some ring-boxes, which disclosed a fine emerald with diamonds, and just then the sun passing beyond a cloud sent a bright gleam over the table.

“How very beautiful these gems are!” said Dorothea, under a new current of feeling, as sudden as the gleam. “It is strange how deeply colors seem to penetrate one, like scent. I suppose that is the reason why gems are used as spiritual emblems in the Revelation of St. John. They look like fragments of heaven. I think that emerald is more beautiful than any of them.”

-Middlemarch, George Eliot. Book I, Chapter I.

Color: that grand illusion, that disturber of the peace, that fugitive, that seeming magic! The inventor of synthetic indigo received the Nobel Peace Prize, no doubt in part because natural indigo dye had played the instigator in many a bloody conflict. In this way, as a tangible good, color is like salt—and yet, without salt humans and indeed all lifeforms would cease to exist. Not so with indigo. And so color is also like religion—an intangible thing, not necessary to the physical persistence of life, and yet to most people a matter of such spiritual necessity, that they will kill and die for the same.

Yet we are surrounded by color not made by man; why, then, should we pursue its manufacture? Yes, and why should we carve the likenesses of birds and flowers, or weave patterns reminiscent of water, or make beetles out of jewels? Has a human being ever truly delighted in some natural phenomenon, without desiring to make it again himself?

Today color is out of fashion, and no wonder. Our perpetual inundation with blaring synthetic shades through the nineties and oughts, has spoiled our palates. Yet for myself, I feel with Dorothea Brooke that color may be as intoxicating as scent. Inexplicable as this may seem—for really, what can be the spiritual difference between two illusions?—I feel this headiness most acutely with natural dyes. In fact I have long been enamored of the romance of these processes. Lately I had the opportunity to take a class with master dyer Stefania Isaacson. Under her guidance, my fellow students and I created all these shades, extracted entirely from natural sources:

This wonderful class kindled an ember of curiosity into an inferno—and I came home from the festival where it had taken place, with a fleece and a determination: to dye, spin and knit my very own Fair Isle sweater, using entirely natural dyes.

For those unfamiliar, Fair Isle knitting is a colorwork style which originated on Fair Isle in Scotland. It has been practiced since at least the mid-19th century, but became widely popular in the 1920s during the golf craze, when the Prince of Wales was painted wearing his own favorite:

Prince of Wales painted by Lander, English. 1925.

The sweater, here, is very much the star of the show (well, after the dog, of course). The Prince of Wales being something of a trend-setter at the time, Fair Isle everything became the height of fashion. It has remained a beloved style ever since.

The Project

For my sweater, I have decided to keep the background natural, and to dye four shades, with four different plants.

• Gold-yellow, with marigolds

• Green, with buckthorn berries

• Tan-brown, with black tea leaves

• Violet, with Seneca Red Stalker corn husks

The easiest color by far to dye naturally is yellow; and since I had some marigolds already harvested from my garden languishing in the freezer, I decided to start there.

The Process

I started with this 4-lb, lightly skirted fleece from an Illinois shepherd who breeds Shetlands; a very appropriate fleece for this project! It is labeled “Lionel” because that is the name of the sheep who was sheared. For this first dyeing experiment, I took about a half pound of wool and washed, or “scoured” it; after scouring, you can see it is much cleaner:

Then, it was time to get started with dyeing!

The Dyeing

I knew I wanted to use some marigolds I had harvested from my garden and popped in the freezer. Marigolds, I had heard, yield a wonderful, golden-yellow dye, which is colorfast. That is one thing to keep in mind with natural dyes: while you may get a pigment from many sources, (looking at you, red cabbage,) that pigment will not necessarily withstand washing, sunlight, or many other features getting on with daily life.

The dye from marigolds is, however, colorfast, so I was ready to move on to the first step of dyeing: mordanting.

The Mordant Process

I think “mordant” is a wonderful word. It is evocative of danger, romance and castles. However, its real meaning is to use a substance to bind color to fiber or textiles. In most cases, you can use people- and environmentally-friendly alum, a compound of aluminum and potassium used, among other things, in pickling.

By adding a little bit of alum to water, adding fiber, and heating for about an hour or so, (with a long cooldown afterwards,) the mordant binds to the fiber. Dye molecules love this mordant, and bind to it in turn, which makes color stick, rather than run off in the wash.

My fiber mordanted, I was ready to dye!

The Dye Process

First, I boiled my marigolds in plenty of water for about an hour, and let them steep for a further half hour after that. At the beginning of this process they looked very pretty indeed:

I then fished out the marigolds, and added my pre-mordanted fiber. After simmering for about an hour, I could tell I had gotten a good color strike:

I then let the fiber sit in its bath overnight. In the morning, I rinsed the fiber with a pH-neutral wool wash and some vinegar and then left it to dry for several days. And this was my final result:

The camera makes it look paler than it is, but I achieved a lovely, rich gold, and I am in love! I am already looking forward to my next dye job; stay posted for the other three colors!

I will see you next week with a wardrobe update, and in the meantime, I hope you have a satisfying week.