Where to Find Natural Dyes?

Common Natural Dyes

Let's get into the Dyestuff. An industry term meaning a material yielding dye in a solution, but in human terms this is the stuff that make dye, hence dyestuff. Dye material is difficult to see with the naked eye, but thanks to science and immense amount of research over the thousands of years, we have a plethora of natural materials for dyes.

Madder Plant

The madder plant (rubia tinctorum) produces a vibarant red dye. In my previous articles, I've outlined the madder plant's historical significance with the English Royal Army. The madder plant is the source of the English's red coats. The plant was native to the India and the near east taking on different traditions from India to Turkey. India is the originators of the recipes and process for dyeing with madder.

To use madder as a raw material, you must wait for full maturity of the plant. The dye molecules are not found in the leaves, stems, or berries of the plant. The dye is extracted from plants roots which have a bright red color. Harvesting the root for dyeing is a risky persuit. Roots are the internal organs for plants and chopping them up for dyestuff ultimately will kill the plant altogether. It is ideal to harvest from the plant after the roots have reached 1(in) or 2.5(cm) in diameter. Keeping to this rule and leaving all smaller roots alone will allow your madder plant to continue growing resulting in more dye stuff. After harvesting the root, make sure your root is clean and completely dry before cutting the root into smaller pieces. Finally, use a food processor to grand the dried root into a powder and measure at about 50% wof (weight of fiber) for a medium depth of shade.

Weld Plant

The next plant on my list is weld (reseda iuteola). Weld is native to Europe and Western Asia. It was the most common dye in the middle ages until the 19th and 20th century with the development of synthetic dyes. Weld was a large export from France and considered a common weed. The plant can survive in numerous conditions, but is grown best for dyer's in a sandy, rocky location rather than nutrient, moist soil.

Lac Insect

Native to Asia, Lac is a product from the Kerria Lacca a spieces of insects. Lac is a natural secretion resin formed during the insect's life cycle. The insect feeds on the membrane of different trees and fills the holes with this resiny wax. The wax is refined into numerous consumer products including shelac, lac dye, and cosmetics. The color ranges from lac vary from a crimson to yellow. The color produced is closely related to the insects genetics, crimson resin is a dominate trait whereas yellow resin is a recessive trait. This means there is the ability to cultivate the insect, but it is commonly known as a pest in southern asia.

Cochineal Insect

Cochineal insects are a scaly parasitic bug that is native to Central and North America (Mexico and Southwest United States). The insect lives and thrives on the prickly pear cactus taking in it's moisture and nurients from the plant. These insects are easily harvested from the plant by brushing them off and letting them dry.

The red dye is created from the insects scales which create carminic acid. Carminic acid acts as a deterrent for for the insects predators. Dyeing with the natural material means purchasing dried insects online or from a local artisan shop. To best extract the dye, you will need to crush the dried insect into a powder with a mordar and pestal. Then you will be left with a deep carmine red powder which will need to be heated in water to create the dye solution.

Because cochineal's color comes from carminic acid, the compounds themselves are pH sensitive. This means you can change the color of cochineal from a bright red to a purple. Below is a quick study I did on the affects of altering the dye solutions pH balance on wool yarn. The main limitation to this study is wool fiber is already acidic and does not react well to heat or higher pH levels. This resulted in an outcome of the acidic dye bath was a deep red color, but the basic dye bath only resulted in a lighter pink color. The neutral dye bath was created from tapwater at a neutral 7 pH level.

Osage Orange

Osage Orange is a tree or hedge more formally called, Maclura pomifera. The Osage tree has many english names through the years including "hedge-apple", "horse apple", and "yellow-wood". Additionally, the french first named the plant "bois d'arc" which is where english appropriators corrupted the names "bodark" and "bodock" for the plant as well. The Osage Nation is now it's common name sake because they were first obtained by the Osage tribes during Merriweather Lewis's exploration in the Louisiana Purchase. The Osage tree is a strong, hard wood that secreetes a white latex when it's wounded. This latex helps the wood fibers to remain elastic and was the reason the Osage tribes would use this wood for their bows.

The Osage Orange as a hedge was a key boundary or barrier used in the Great Plains farmland. The hedge would be used as a natural fence to separate livestock from vegetable gardens. When you prune the tree down, shoots of smaller trees surround the plant and get intertwined. These shoots are thorny and dense which creates a sharp, elastic barrier. This is the reason for its names as "hedge-apple" or "horse-apple". This was a great solution for containing bulls, cows, horses, pigs, and more.

For the natural dyer, this plant is most known for it's yellow wood fibers. These fibers can be boiled releasing a vibarent yellowy-orange color. Wood chips are the best form of the tree when used as dye material. It's best to source this type of material from local carpenters, woodturners, and artisans.

Walnut Husks

Black Walnut, Juglans nigra, is a commercially significant tree in North America. It grows natively as north as Onterio, Canada; as south as Georgia, USA; and as west as central Texas. This tree is aboundant in the Mid-west and the South. It's known for its deep brown wood colors and its seed which is used in cooking.

For the natural dyer, the dye material of Black Walnut trees are in the outer husks of the plants fruit or seed. In order to extract from natural materials, you will need to collect multiple green walnut husks. Before heating in a pot of water, you will want to break open the husk and remove the hard nut of the fruit. This will make sure contaminents in the seed won't affect your dye solution. An added benefit to utlizing Black Walnut as a dye material is the dye consentration. 1 black walnut husk is able to dye 100 grams of fiber material. Now imagine you harvest a buckett of black walnuts, you can potentially dye nearly 10,000 grams of fiber.

Myrobalan

A tree native to South Asia, in the countries of India, Pakistan, Nepel, Malaysia, and Vietnam, is also commonly known at the Black Myrobalan Tree. The dyestuff is derived from the nuts of the tree. Ground down to a fine powder is how you will commonly purchase this material. The nuts of the tree hold the most tannin and flavaniods, resulting in buttery yellow hues when applied to the clothe. The high concentration of tannins adds to Myrobalan's light fastness on various textiles and leather products. This dye has been used for centuries now and is a staple for South Asian textiles.

This post could go on and on with what seems like an endless amount of natural dye plants and insects. These that I have listed above are just a few that I have reserached and discovered along my journey into natural dye. Dyestuff is found all over the globe with a variety of pigmentation and cultural importance. I will continue my research into finding more colors and processes for natural dye.