Selection of the Crafters' Choice Book Club
Beautiful natural dyes from plants found in the wild or grown in your
own backyard.
As more and more crafters are discovering, dyeing your own fabric can
yield gorgeous colors. Now master dyer Rebecca Burgess identifies 36
plants that will yield beautiful natural shades and shows how easy it is
to make the dyes. Pokeweed creates a vibrant magenta, while a range of
soft lavender shades is created from elderberries; indigo yields a
bright blue, and coyote brush creates stunning sunny yellows.
Gathering Color explains where to find these plants in the wild (and
for those that can be grown in your backyard, how to nurture them) and
the best time and way to harvest them; maps show the range of each plant
in the United States and Canada. For the dyeing itself, Burgess
describes the simple equipment needed and provides a master dye recipe.
The book is organized seasonally; as an added bonus, each section
contains a knitting project using wools colored with dyes from plants
harvested during that time of the year. With breathtaking color
photographs by Paige Green throughout, Gathering Color is an essential
guide to this growing field, for crafters and DIYers; for ecologists and
botanists; and for artists, textile designers, and art students.
