Dyeing With Herbs

I love knitting and cross stitching and have wanted to have a go at dyeing my own wool or even silks for embroidery for a long time, but I didn't know enough on the subject to get any further, but I knew that I wanted to use natural dyes made from herbs, so I began to find out more on the subject.

The idea to dye with herbs really took hold when I visited Lavenham Guildhall a couple of years ago, there they have a small dyeing herbs garden and inside a small museum with examples of natural dyes and displays of age old techniques such as using a teasle brush to 'card' wool. The above photo was taken there and shows a basket of wools dyed with Cow Parsley, Beetroot, Woad, Field Poppy, Lady's Bedstraw, Weld, Walnut, Elderberry, Onion, Indigo and Blackberry.

Lavenham's dyer's garden contained a variety of herbs that have been used for dyeing since medieval times, herbs such as Weld, Rue, Dyer's Greenweed, Tansy, Madder, Woad, Golden Rod, Dyer's Chamomile, Yellow Flag Iris and Lily Of The Valley which apparently yields a soft apple green colour, until that point I'd never known that Lily Of The Valley had been used as a dye plant! After Lavenham I continued to learn about herbs that can be used for dyeing, although until now I've not taken things any further. I've picked up several books on the subject, sourced some mordants and even have a few dried herbs ready to have a go, but buying off the shelf dried herbs don't satisfy the herbaholic in me, and of course I have a desire to grow and process my own herbs for dyeing.

Last year with Simon's help we created two veg beds, but the slugs ate more of the veg than we did, so this year I'm turning one of the beds into a 'Dyeing Herbs Bed'. I've yesterday I sowed seeds of Indigo (Indigofera tinctoria, which I know is notoriously difficult to grow in the UK, but I can at least try!), Dyer's Chamomile (Anthemis tinctoria), Dyer's Coreopsis (Coreopsis tinctoria), Hops (Humulus lupulus), and today I ordered some False Alkanet (Anchusa officinalis), Safflower (Carthamus tinctoria), Woad (Isatis tinctoria) and Weld (Reseda luteola). Already in the garden I have some St John's Wort that I can move to the Dye Bed and I have seeds for sowing French Marigolds (tagetes) and Purple Basil which can also be used as a dye. In the wild I can find Tansy and Yarrow, and I'm going to pick up some Dahlia tubers and some new Marjoram plants as well, apparently the flowers of Marjoram are used to dye fabric a lilacy purple.

There's so many other native herbs that can be used as dyes that are either in my garden, kitchen or available locally, such as; Rhubarb, Gorse, Stinging Nettle, Elderberry, Red Cabbage, Onion, Ivy, Bracken and Blackberry that it will certainly take a while to experiment with them all. My plan is to use only native herbs, so you won't find me using Brazilwood, Logwood or Cutch, the whole point is to use herbs that my ancestors would have used, yes I know that Ingido doesn't count, but I wanted the challenge of trying to raise that plant from seed.

Let's not forget the use of herbs as dyes to colour creams and balms when making natural cosmetics. I watched Christina Stapley do a workshop on making lotions and balms last September and she mentioned that you can use a variety of herbs to colour creams, balms and lotions for example you can add Alkanet (Alkana tinctoria) to achieve a pink colour, Calendula (Calendula officinalis) for a pale yellow to orange colour or Ribwort Plantain (Plantago lanceolata) to colour green.

Once I have a feel for the dyes and I've grow some to use either fresh or dried I'll then dye some wool and fabric with them. I'm hoping that by this winter I'll have been able to have sown and grown the herbs, processed them, dyed the wool/fabric and finally used it to make a scarf or a patchwork bag! There's lots to discover along the way and a dye herb bed to create, and the historical aspect of the natural herb dyes to learn about as well as all the skills and techniques involved so it should be a fun project.