Why use natural plant and insect dyes?

Why take the time to create colors from nature that are not reproducible, are time consuming to create, and often have surprising results? People are drawn to it for many reasons.  It is a form of personal expression; a way of creating something purely unique; of developing a closer relationship with color and with the world around us. It is usually more time consuming than using commercial dyes, often requiring a number of steps. It is not reproducible, in that you will likely never create exactly the same results more than once. But the results are rarely completely without merit, whether they teach us something new or show us a surprising twist of nature. Even if we end up with a color we are not happy with, all is not lost. We can over-dye with another color, after-mordant the wool with a different material, or blend the wool with other colors.

I think of dyeing with natural dyestuff as an extension of the art of creating my own fiber. We can think about color in much the same was as any other part of the fiber. No two animals produce the exact same fleece. The wool from one animal changes depending on what part of the animal the wool is from and from year to year. The fleece from one animal will never be quite the same from one sheering to another. This is due in part to aging, food, environment, health, and many more variables.

Plant and insect dyes are much the same. They differ from plant to plant, time of year, year to year, soil types, water characteristics, and much more. When we add in all the other variables of creating the dye bath and dyeing the fiber such as, mordants, assists, timing, water used to make the bath, type of pot the dye bath is created in we start to appreciate how individual each “dye experiment” is.

I think all this helps to make each piece I create something truly unique and individual. That is the reason I am drawn to natural dyes. It is the same reason that I spin my own fiber, raised my own animals, and processed the fiber by hand or at most at a small mill. It is easy to purchase commercial yarns that are created in commercial mills using wool pools and chemical dyes to ensure consistency. And you can use that to create things from other people’s patterns, or create your own. You could just purchase that sweater rather than bothering with any of it! It is all on a continuum. We each choose jump in where we feel comfortable.