Plant Dyes

Latin: Chenopodium capitatum

Low lying plant with leaves spaced far apart. Where the leaf joins the stem is a cluster of bright red fruit. Use the juice of the berries for a pink/purple. Try vinegar to set the dye, or an alum mordant.

Scrub the peels clean. Add to bath of vinegar and cream of tartar. Rosey gold. Add premordanted wool (alum) Also try avocado pits.

Purple Cabbage

Mordants:

Alum - yellow, beige
Ammonia - pale green
Tin - lavender
Vinegar - pink, lilac

Afterbath: add washing soda dissolved in boiling water
turquoise

Simmer birch bark in dye bath. Add mordanted wool. Simmer. Colour: pinkish beige

Hollyhock berries

Colour: pale yellow.

Coreopsis Tinctoria

Use 1 1/2 cups of flowers per dye bath.

Mordants:
alum - antique pine
iron - dark brown
copper - chestnut brown
tin - gold

Colour: sage green

Simmer with rusty nails or in an iron pot. Colour: dark grey

Colour: Coffee cream