Creating a Sustainable Business
12 Aug 2025
A blog post in light of the webinar I presented in October 2021. If there is anything I have learned about building a business, it is that your expectations, aspirations and reality do not always match. When I started working on my profile on a networking website for sustainable fashion-related businesses, it made me fill [...]
A Tour in the New Studio
12 Aug 2025
You may know how I started working from my home, then occupied a spare bedroom and eight months ago moved out of that room to a small studio space at around seven minutes driving from my house. Well that space became too small, very fast, as I added products. What was worse: it had the [...]
It is getting chillier in the evenings and my Cotinus bush is showing signs of the autumn as its’ leaves are turning brown. If you love eco printing as much as I do, you will dread running out of leaves to use. If you have not done so yet, this is the last window of [...]
Imperial Purple and Holy Blue – Mollusk Dyes
12 Aug 2025
Dyeing fibres with the use of sea snails (Murex) is an art found in history from the Irish coast lines to the Adriatic seas and the Mediterranean coasts. In Mexico and Guatemala the knowledge is still alive, but this platform is too small to cover them all so I will limit myself to things close [...]
Make beautiful soap with natural dyes
12 Aug 2025
Nicole Cohen Yechezkel helped me put together these lovely bars of soap so you get a small preview of what you can do with natural dyes in soaps. She has a lovely website with holistic, handmade, natural skincare. You can be sure I will be posting about this more often! For grays: Sandal wood is [...]
The Indigotin Extraction Process To extract indigotin so we can store it (almost) indefinitely) we need to transform indican (a pale green organic compound present in the leaves of Indigofera, Isatis and Persicaria plants) into indoxyl and then into indigotin. To explain this complicated process I have made a small illustrative video. Do we always [...]
Dyeing like it’s 1744
12 Aug 2025
When I was young(er) I studied classical guitar. I actually have a degree-and-a-half in it, finishing the final concert of my Masters degree but not the accompanying thesis. The topic I was assigned bored me and they wanted me to write it in Hebrew. That made my motivation dive to historical lows until I finally [...]
Eco Printing with ‘Blankets’
12 Aug 2025
Does my target piece need a mordant? Well that depends. If you are using tannin rich leaves, you do not really have to. If you are using anything else, mordanting with aluminium tri-formate or alum will be a great idea. See also this blog for tips on your first botanical print; https://naturaldyestore.com/blogs/blog/8-key-tips-for-your-first-eco-print If you are [...]
Using Clubmoss as an Alum Mordant
11 Aug 2025
Bioaccumulation is the gradual accumulation of substances in an organism, in this case; alum. There are a few plants that are bio-accumulators of alum. For example, the fallen leaves of the Symplocos tree, tea leaves can contain very high concentrations of aluminum (up to 5,000 mg/kg in old leaves), and a few ferns. Clubmosses (Lycopodiopsida) [...]
Naphthoquinones, these are wonderful stable yellows and browns. Unlike Flavonoids, there are not many plant species that contain naphthoquinone. Naphthoquinone subgroups are; Plumbagin (walnut drupes, Indian leadwort) Juglone, found in all species of the walnut family (Juglandaceae). This includes trees such as black walnut, butternut, hickories and pecan. Black walnut hulls have the highest concentration [...]
Besides being an amazing dye component, anthraquinones are known as laxatives in natural medicine. Rhubarb root for example contains Physicion, which gives a red under alkaline circumstances but is also the stuff that will make you purge when you drink a tea from it. Do anthraquinone dyes need a mordant? Anthraquinone dyes are substantive on [...]
Foraging Flavonoids
11 Aug 2025
Before we get started, let’s agree on what I call the Foragers Pact; When foraging it’s important to leave enough for the plant to thrive and allow enough to be left for birds and other animals. As a rule of thumb: take only what you need and not more than 10% of any living plant. [...]
Flavonoids There are over 5000 naturally occurring flavonoids that have been characterized from various plants. They are classified according to their chemical structure, and are divided into subgroups, each subgroup has their little list of flavonoids. I have put together the ones you would be looking for (or should be avoiding) that have relevance to [...]
Natural Dyeing Without a Mordant
11 Aug 2025
Here are 4 Natural Dyes you can use without the need of a mordant. Most natural dyes really need a good mordanting, either aluminium-based mordants, copper, ferrous sulfate or tanning using a tannin-rich plant material. Mordanting is important to improve the light- and wash fastness of your textiles and it intensifies the color outcome on [...]
It is really confusing, when you are just getting started and you are reading up on the blogs: cotton, AA, Euc, Fe dip, Steamed for 90 min. What does that even mean? Knowing the lingo will make your experience so much more pleasant, I can not stress enough how important this is. I have collected [...]
7 Different Natural Yellows And An Iron Test
11 Aug 2025
Not all yellows were created equal; some are lovely light fast, others more fugitive. There is warm yellow, sunny yellow, greenish yellow, pale yellow... the possibility are endless. I decided to test the very best of the bunch for you. Besides pomegranate and myrobalan (being substantive dyes), all yellow dyes will need a good mordant [...]
Dyeing with Dyer’s Greenweed
11 Aug 2025
Dyer’s Greenweed, Dyer’s Broom, Dyer’s Mignonette, Dyer’s Whin, Waxen Woad and Waxen Wood are all names used for the same dye plant known in Latin as Genista Tinctoria. It was often used in dye houses as substitute for Weld, when weld prices were too high. In the 17th and 18th century, Weld prices were linked [...]
5 Different Mordants in Eco Printing
11 Aug 2025
In several previous blogs you have been able to see and read more about the different results in natural dyes when using different mordants. In this blog I want to show you the results in reference to eco printing. The natural juices and tannins present in the leaves leave different prints on fabric and paper [...]
Make dye and ink from Persian Berries
11 Aug 2025
They are another classic of the natural dye world. Buckthorn berries, Avignon berries, or best known as; Persian berries. Buckthorn shrubs are common in the east and have been cultivated in Europe since Roman times. In the United States some species of Rhamnus are considered invasive and they are being actively eradicated. Our Persian berries [...]
I love an organized space. I love things to be neat and where it should be, but the moment I get creative, the mess takes over and I know I am not alone. Especially eco printing with a million leaves, mordant buckets and barriers flying around! So I asked my friend Rebekah Saltzman to join [...]
Quick Fresh Indigo
11 Aug 2025
I was gifted 5 beautiful Persicaria Tinctoria plants by my new friend Hagar in the North of my country. She has been growing a field of it behind her house, together with Indigofera Tinctoria. It makes me slightly envious to be able to grow such a treasure behind your house and I really miss not [...]
4 types of aluminium mordants & recipes for use
11 Aug 2025
Aluminium based mordants for every fiber. (disclaimer: there is now a new mordant called aluminium lactate, but the results for it are not on this page) Aluminium is the most used mineral salt for mordanting fibers. We know it as alum (potassium aluminium sulfate) for protein fibers and aluminium acetate is the version used for [...]
A small recap, tannins are divided in three major groups; 1 – Gallic tannins. Clear tannins that do not add much colour to the fabric such as tara, oak galls, oak bark, sumac (leaves and galls). 2 – Ellagic tannins. Tannins with a lot of flavonoids that will add a yellow colour to the fabric [...]
How-to; Improve any eco print in 5 minutes
11 Aug 2025
Sometimes an ecoprinted silk can be a bit too simple. If you did not work with any natural dye in the process it can happen that the result lacks a bit of depth that happens when we are working with for example a dye blanket or other ore intricate techniques. And sometimes we just do [...]
Make Your Own Ink From Plant Materials
10 Aug 2025
Making your own ink is not complicated and writing with a traditional quill is lots of fun. Time to polish up your calligraphy skills and write some letters. Historical inks have been made on different bases; Carbon. The earliest black inks were for the majority carbon based (soot), Pliny the Elder mentions in his books [...]
8 Key Tips for your First Eco Print
10 Aug 2025
(Or your second) Eco printing has been the rage for the past few years. The term minted by eco print guru India Flint has evolved at the speed of light. With it, it renewed the interest in all things concerning natural dyeing. Surely the quest for eco-friendly, sustainable, and home-made goods has been a contribution [...]
(And nine ways to get it right) You are here because you looked at those beautiful Pinterest graphics using cabbage and black beans. You tried it with excitement, feeling all green and sustainable. After one wash your funky T-shirt looked like something that was left in the compost for a month. How? Why? The truth [...]
I have a lot of beeswax left from some experiments in Batik resist techniques on silk. I was really unsure what to do with it. Throwing away is a waste, I don’t think I will be doing a lot of Batik though and my space is super limited for the time being. My wonderful friend [...]
Dyeing with Bark Dyes
9 Aug 2025
Vegetable dye stuffs come in all kinds of shapes and forms; Flowers such as St Johnswort and Goldenrod, roots like madder and Himalayan rhubarb. Our favourite leaves for example indigo and woad, nut hulls such as walnut. Berries from myrobalan, fruit seeds such as annatto. Fruit rinds like pomegranate. Heartwood comes in the shape of [...]
Shade Card Natural Dyes
9 Aug 2025
Pick your colour Feast your eyes on a rainbow of natural colours. I have started an overview here for dyes I use that are available on the website and are commonly used. Each dye has a world of colour, depending on so many variables; how much dye issued, how long is the dye in the [...]
Setting Up A Hydros Indigo Vat
9 Aug 2025
SETTING UP YOUR FIRST INDIGO VAT The eternal blue of indigo, one of the most ancient dyes. From sky- to deep sea blues, it is so versatile, over-dye it with madder for lasting purples and weld for greens. Making an indigo vat can seem like a daunting task, but trust me, once you get it [...]
10 minute DIY project with scraps
9 Aug 2025
So we made these awesome solar dyeing scraps, and we have leftovers from eco print tests. Lots of people have been dyeing along in the BotanicalPrint group on Facebook, did you see the compilation of slow dye jars? But back to the final scraps. What do we do with them? Besides keeping a great deal [...]
World Wide Slow Dye Jars
9 Aug 2025
My heart is filled with joy seeing all the jars people have set up after the slow dye post. We should never give up creating something beautiful in these weird and unsettling times. Wishing everyone good health! (If you don’t see your jar, send a picture to my mail (in the footer) and I will [...]
Red Eucalyptus Eco Prints
9 Aug 2025
There are not many people who would not want to create those amazing red and orange eucalyptus eco prints. They are so bold in their simplicity, and do not need anything else to embellish them. I too, love the simple cream and red, sometimes with a bit of black. So how is it done? If [...]
Compound colours; Indigo and Weld greens
9 Aug 2025
Some colours (especially light fast) are hard to create with natural dyes, certain shades of purple, orange and greens. For these shades we mix two different colours, like a simple colour wheel. In a previous blog I showed how you can make a great green using logwood. Now I will show you how to create [...]
For all natural dyes to stay permanent on fibres, we need to understand the curve between mordant (for adjective dyes), heat, length of time in the dye bath and the WOF (weight of fibre, the percentage of dye stuff in correlation to the weight of the fibres we want to dye). What does this mean? [...]
Fiber Foundations: Assists and Modifiers
9 Aug 2025
Assists and modifiers. You test Ph with Ph test strips or a digital Ph meter. Alkaline assists and modifiers; (in order of strength) Chalk is used as a color changer. If you have soft water with a low Ph, the addition of chalk to your dye bath will make your water harder. Chalk in the [...]
Mordants and tannins. Assists and modifiers
8 Aug 2025
On the various eco-printing and natural dye fora there is a lot of confusion and mis-use of terminology going on when it comes to the processes of mordanting fabrics. Why do we need to mordant? Natural dyes are divided in substantive (direct) and adjective (indirect) dyes. When a dye is not substantive, it means it [...]
Rhamnus frangula (Alder Buckthorn) on cotton
8 Aug 2025
In the previous post I showed dyeing with alder buckthorn (aka glossy buckthorn, rhamnus frangula, rhamnus alnus) on mainly protein fibres such as merino wool and handwoven silk. In this post I will show the dye process with exact amounts and on cellulose fabrics. None of the textiles were mordanted, but all were washed with [...]
Dyeing fabrics with Alder Buckthorn
8 Aug 2025
A bit of fun history Rhamnus frangula aka Frangula alnus, commonly known as alder buckthorn, glossy buckthorn, or breaking buckthorn. Unlike other “buckthorns”, alder buckthorn does not have thorns. The word frangula is derived from the Latin “frangere”, breaking and refers to the fragility of the wood. The Dutch name “vuilboom” (foul tree) is related [...]
Green without indigo, using logwood and weld
8 Aug 2025
I love going to the museum and looking at the different gowns in the portraits and how they must have dyed them. Remember this famous painting by Jan Van Eyck? Look at that amazing green. (Just a fun fact; the lady looks pregnant but probably is just holding a whole lot of fabric in the [...]
Printing with natural dyes
8 Aug 2025
As I worked my way through several 18th century dye manuals I could not miss the reference to using natural dyes in calico printing. Calico is a simple name for many different techniques that involve the application of patterned mordants and dyes with the use of wooden carved blocks, or with pencils, or screens, Calico [...]
I went to visit the fields in Brabant where Rubia tinctorum has been cultivated since the 14th century, when it was brought to Europe from Asia by Karel The Great. In fact, it had the name of being the best crop available throughout the 18th century (E. Bancroft). There is something very profound about reviewing [...]
Prune de Monsieur, the durable logwood mordant. The logwood discoveries have been ongoing over the last few months. Logwood (campecheianum heamatoxylon) really is a crowd pleaser. Stunning purples, blues, greys and blacks from a tree that is fast-growing, easy to use in dyeing, and extra bonus; economical. it would have been the greatest dye on [...]
In this blog I will show the different colours achieved with tannins, and how to create a dark background using an iron Blanket in eco printing. The classic way of creating blacks and other dark backgrounds in eco printing is the use of tannins in combination with ferrous sulphate (often called; iron). It’s quick, easy [...]
If you know my work you know I will always try to go straight to the source of everything; my cochineal comes directly from a small farmer, the eri silk fabrics come from a family of weavers I know personally, and so on. Until now, my Indigo has always come from India. In the region [...]
As promised; logwood black
7 Aug 2025
I know I promised, and then things happened but after the post about logwood blue, here is the method for logwood black. Logwood black sequence Lately I have been doing a lot of cross research, taking recipes from different (old) books such as Bancroft, Bronson and Liles and evaluating the percentages. Often this is a [...]
Introduction; Logwood, haematoxylon campechianum, member of the pea family. Once it was super popular, then it became forbidden for use because it was not lightfast by Queen Elizabeth I of Engeland in 1581. Can we use it in good faith as a natural dye? I believe we can, but good mordanting is the key to [...]