Natural & Modern Dyeing

Natural Dyeing has been a passion for me for over 25 years. Colors from natural sources like plants, mushrooms, lichen, insects, & shellfish can be modified with mordants (metal salts like ferris sulfate or copper sulfate) to create a huge range of colors and shades on any natural fiber (silk, wool, cotton, & linen being the most common.)  I uses the naturally dyed embroidery thread and fabrics in other works but they remain a joy to work with from the start.

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The understanding that a color obtained from a natural source is a record of both time and place is important.  Harvests vary throughout the year and year to year causing variation in color as well as location grown.  Additionally, research has show that the trace minerals in the water used in dyeing creates further variation in the colors obtained.  Therefore any color obtained is specific to the harvest and location, dyeing method, material dyed, & water source.  Each colors is unique to the location and moment in time in which it was created.

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I am particularly interested in using invasive species as sources of natural dyes as part of the overall mitigation process.  In the gallery above you can find examples of natural dyes obtained from Common Reeds which are invasive in the US.  Their purple seed heads can be harvest in the fall and used to create natural dyes in a variety of colors. This work, "Using Natural Dyes for Ecological Education", was published in the American Public Gardens Association Public Garden Magazine, Volume 39, Issue 1, 2024.