A Knitter’s Guide to Dye Plants

I hadn’t thought much about natural dyeing because I’ve always bought already-dyed yarn from a yarn shop. That is until I watched farmers Tammy White and Carole Foster talk about dyeing their yarns in Episode 4 of The Yarn Chronicles.

In this episode, Tammy describes her dye garden of marigolds, Hopi sunflowers, weld, indigo, and more, which she uses to dye skeins of yarn at Wing & A Prayer Farm. Carole and her family grow dye plants such as indigo, madder, and coreopsis for Foster Sheep Farm’s home-grown yarns. Knitwear designer Norah Gaughan talks about falling in love with the yarn for her Wee Cardi pattern. This colorway gets its green hue from indigo, marigold, and onion at Wing & A Prayer.

The yarn for the Wee Cardi pattern by Norah Gaughan was dyed (by Tammy White) using indigo, marigold, and onion skins. Photo by Gale Zucker

Though Carole and Tammy show several examples of naturally dyed yarns in the episode, I wondered what colors those plants would create on their own. That curiosity led me to Long Thread Media’s book Nature’s Colorways. Donna Brown and the Janice Ford Memorial Dye Garden gave samples and information used in the book to create a gallery of yarn samples with their dye plants, which includes several of the plants mentioned in Episode 4.

The color results are sometimes exactly what you’d think and other times totally unexpected. For example, indigo plants dye in gorgeous blues, but using Hopi sunflowers on a white yarn creates a beautiful silver color! The orange-flowered marigold gives a yellow dye, but the bright yellow of cota yields a bright orange. As Carole mentions in the video, the color of the base fiber impacts the dye colors (a gray base will dye differently than a white or cream), but how cool are these plants? I love how you can use plants, bark, lichens, kitchen scraps, and more and combine several items to produce astounding colors.

Get a closer look! Click any image in the gallery to open it in full-screen mode.

As I dug in more, I found natural dyeing to be more and more intriguing. It’s about bringing together chemistry + natural ingredients, just like in baking! Once you have the proper knowledge and understanding of precautions to take, natural dyeing is also safe to explore at home.

If you are interested in planting your own dye garden, you only need a little space, basic gardening skills, and a sense of adventure. For a guide to some common dye plants, growing zones, and the colors they produce, see this subscriber bonus download in the library.

May all your color dreams come true!
~Tiffany