Customer Reviews

North American Dye Plants (The Scribner Library. Crafts)

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Small in stature, but a chubby book at 288 pages, this contains a wealth of info for anyone wanting to use natural dyes. The first 31 pages tells the dying techniques and ideas for foraging and using plants. Each plant is then listed alphabetically with 2 pages for each. You get the common name, botanic name, a general description with other possible uses such as being edible, then the dye applications. It tells what colors you get when you mix the plant with alum, chrome, copper, tin, iron, and no mordant. It also gives the lightfastness of the dye (amount of fading to expect).
There are 126 plants, mostly wildflowers, but also some trees.
The second page shows a sketch of each plant drawn by the author's husband. These seem more decorative than practical for identification purposes. It has a cross-index at the back for the common and botanical names.

I lost my copy of this classic and was thrilled to find it here! It is the definitive resource for dyeing with vegetation. No high gloss photos - just simple clear line drawings of the plant materials and straightforward instructions for dyeing using mordants (chemicals) to set colors on protein fibers.